In the name of Earth and Balaho, till the bitter end!
by dutchsoldier
Summary: The Reapers say they do not know fear and never experience it, but how long will this remain the truth when Humanities greatest heroes from another dimension come here with ships and allies? Will the name demon rise once more, with now entire armada's of Reapers fleeing at the mere sight of him, or will humanity and their allies die fighting like the Protheans before them?
1. Prequel chapter 1

In the name of Earth and Balaho, till the bitter end!

Prequel chapter 1: Why do we always have to clean up these messes?

If you are only here to read the story, not listen to an explanation of anything, skip to the next not bold sentence

**Authors note: Ok, as I have said in the Authors note chapter of my other stories, I'll be working on this while also rewriting the story 'Avengers of Mass Effect'. This means that updates will likely be infrequent and somewhat smaller then the recent ones of my other stories (all of which are 20.000 words or more).**

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**For this story I'll be going for chapters somewhere between 5000 and 10000 words, not only so that updates will be somewhat more frequent if smaller, but also to make it easier to incorporate people's advice into the stories.**

**With this said, I am very unsure how high the quality of this story actually is, so please do give a review on it. I'm also trying to represent the characters as realistically as possible, though in the case of the Master Chief and Cortona this will probably be harder then most people expect. He's a super-soldier, child-soldier and war hero that has been in near constant combat in a war of unimaginable scale for 70% of his life.**

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**Cortona meanwhile is an A.I. that has developed feelings for a human that has stared death into the eyes multiple times, and she has had to live with the idea that she would think herself into insanity and potentially turn on the people she loves in less than 7 years after her birth, while she also spent many years alone on a mostly destroyed space-ship, unable to wake her only companion on the ship who also happened to be the man she loved out of fear that he would die. **

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**Both of them are going to have severe problems in handling this. Now, to ensure everyone knows something first: I know that Cortona is supposed to die taking down the 150km long ship that the Didact will attempt to use to destroy Earth and then somehow end up in the domain, however I have thought of a way for her to survive which will be written into a flashback in the next chapter of the story. If people think its not realistic, please message me the why and how once I've released it, if possible also giving a suggestion on what can be done to create a better version of it.**

**Rewrite on 24-5-2019: I'm finally working on the problems the reviewers talked about concerning this chapter, I hope that it is now a better version of it. People whom have read it previously, please do give me an update on wether or not it is better in the reviews. Also, the name has been changed the reason for this will be in the third chapter of the prequel, after which there will be a time-line.  
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**Disclaimer: I do not own either HALO or Mass Effect, the only thing about this story owned by me are the names of the OC's, the same as every other fanfiction writer. Both game series belong to their respective developers.  
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And now that the Authors note and disclaimer are over, onto the story.

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Chapter 1: Why do we always have to clean up these messes?

Dimension: HALO, Location: the light frigate UNSC Divinity in wild space, date: 5th of August of the year 2557 of the UNSC military calendar 00.30 hours

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Mityat POV

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This promotion is nice, now I finally have a commanding position among my brothers and sisters of the Unggoy race, when I never got one even after years of fighting for the Gods be damned Prophets. Those fools that sided with the Covenant Remnant are probably not getting anywhere near as good a treatment as our side gives us.  
Oh well, their problem, I get this nice command position over the Unggoy members of a joint mission with these humans and every member of our species that sides with the Swords of Sanghellios gets the human civilian genetic modification package adapted to Unggoy biology expanding our life-span from 60 to 120 years.

These genetic modifications do not only do that but they also give us the ability to survive without methane for longer periods of time due to our lungs now being able to turn oxygen into methane, though outside of pure oxygen its not enough to sustain us indefinitely so we do sadly enough have to wear the methane tanks on most occasions.

Still a huge improvement over dying in less than a minute if your methane tank gets damaged. I'll be forever thankful to them for this new chance they've given both myself and my people, even though we were at war with them such a short time before this. The fact that they also added translation devices to the armour every single member of this joint military instead of simply expecting us to learn the language like the Covenant would have is also very refreshing.

Even though we honestly didn't necessarily need the things since most of us can speak and understand English just fine, the gesture is very much appreciated by all of us. Well all of us except for one of the ensign who began grumbling about now having studied the language for no reason and how he could have spent that time more efficiently, but even that was probably mostly complaining so that he could complain about something.

Lastly we also get a better treatment from these humans then we ever got from the others in the Covenant, up to the point that even the demon and the captain are if not friendly at least treating us with a measure of respect for the fact that we are their fellow soldiers risking our lives along with them in this search for the Didacts surviving forces and if the Demon is correct, possibly even a wounded Didact himself.

I just hope he doesn't have another one of those massive ships of the Gods lying around, because while this is a strong ship for a frigate, it would still be the equivalent of me trying to fight a Brute as the humans so accurately describe them with a very well knife in a 1 on 1 duel while he is wielding a gravity hammer. Should not have thought of that, now the possibility of that actually happening is stuck in my head, I'll have Hallyat message the other ship on this expedition to see if they have discovered anything peculiar in the past few hours.

''Hallyat, can you contact the UNSC Athena and the UNSC Forward into the Night to see if they have found anything noteworthy yet?'' Getting an affirmative reaction, I take a moment to look around me at the ships crew. As its currently the so called 'Night shift' most of the bridge crew are me and other Unggoy sailors, while our human counterparts who handle most of the 'Day shift' are asleep for now. The only non-Unggoy on the bridge are the ancilla, captain Cortana, and a single human marine, corporal Stephan Fredrickson, since protocol demands there is an anti-boarding group up, and we don't have enough Unggoy direct combatants to make full Unggoy shifts for that aspect of our schedules.

Not that I have a problem with him being human, however it might have been nice so that we could lower the energy consumption of each specie's specialised sleeping quarters to give more to the captain to assist her in the task of searching what the most likely hide-out of the Didacts remaining forces will be. ''The Athena reports having seen nothing strange appear on their sensors however after multiple attempts neither them nor us can contact the Forward into the Night. What do we do?''

Ok since the Forward until Night is a 'Prowler' type vessel the chance of them having comm issues is relatively small. The highest chances are that they either have found an enemy and cannot send a message out of fear of being found by that enemy, option two that they have been destroyed by an enemy ship or option three that they found something that their captain doesn't want anyone except ONI or UNSC high command to know.

I'll ask for advice from the captain since she probably has more experience with these types of situations. ''What is your take on the situation captain?'' Still a bit strange for the commanding officer of this operation to be the ancilla instead of the Demon, probably has something to do with politics, but hey, she's quite capable and also willing to listen to our advice if the situation requires it so I do not mind too much. She seems to think for a moment before replying.

''Since it's commander is an ONI member chances are equal between him currently trying to hide from the opponent and him trying to hide something from the slip-space engine to jump us to their last known position and tell the Athena to do the same, afterwards notify the 14th and 15th flotilla's requesting them to jump to the nearest solar system and be ready to support us if the situation turns out to be hostile or defend the colony if the remaining enemy forces decide to attack. Mityat, wake up the non-active Unggoy crew, I'll get the humans to get themselves ready for combat.''

We salute her while everyone goes to their assigned tasks, on a normal human ship my job wouldn't be necessary since the ancilla can just wake everyone, however some of our superiors disliked the idea of us not having any privacy at all in our own quarters and as such there are no camera's or holo-pedestals in our barracks aboard the two renovated frigates. While on the one hand I'm grateful to be given some level of privacy, the fact remains that it does create a problematic situation if we were to be ambushed while the day shift is on.

Luckily right now the only people in there are some of our spare sensor operators and mechanics, whom while a useful addition in combat in case somebody gets injured somehow or we get system malfunctions that need to be repaired fast aren't really necessary otherwise. As I arrive at the door I open it to get into the first small methane room, letting the door close behind me I open the second door once the room has been changed to methane again and making my way into the actual barracks. Where even after I try to get them to wake up they seem to keep sleeping. Oh well, they asked for it.

''Wake up you lazy imbeciles and gear up for duty immediately, otherwise no food nipple for you weaklings today!'' I shout in my best imitation of the Sanghelli major we served under a few months before we began this joint mission, and considering that they all wake up almost immediately and scramble to gather their gear, I'm reasonably successful. That is until they are awake enough to remember that they haven't served under a Sanghelli in weeks and that nobody on this ship actually addresses people like that.

I am then subjected to the annoyed gazes of 7 now fully awake Unggoy ensigns and 1 petty officer, who also speaks what is on all their minds ''Lieutenant Mityat with all due respect, what is the reason behind you waking us up in such a nightmare inducing way. As far as I can see we had another'' he checks his wristwatch, which he had won from one of the human crew members in a poker match, what a delightful game that was.

''2 hours at the very least before we would have to replace the current crew members at our usual posts, and as far as I can understand we're not under attack or else you would have kept yelling at us instead of waiting a moment for us to recover.'' Good he's using proper arguments and not just complaining about it being too early to perform work, well as the humans say kill two birds with one stone, I can answer his question and brief them on what is happening at the same time.

''One of the other ships belonging to the task force isn't responding to hails from either us or the Athena and as such we need to go and ensure they aren't in trouble. So no we aren't in combat yet, however that yet is important because we are heading towards their last known location and will be there in less then 20 minutes. I need you all to head towards your posts and ready yourselves for a potential combat situation.'' The annoyance disappears and instead a grim determination appears on their faces. However a hint of fear is visible with some of them, looks like I might need to hold a speech.

''While at one point we may have been the covenant cannon fodder and as such would be afraid of nearly all combat situations, now we are well armed, trained and hardened soldiers that have in most cases months in a few cases even years of experience in warfare. We all know what's at stake in case the Didact is still actually alive like the Demon fears, because while he only wishes for revenge against humanity, with both our own and the Sanghelli economy and military in shambles we would have a much harder time against the Covenant Remnant factions.

Our homes could be destroyed and families might very well die, or even worse enslaved again by those mad fools. Not only that, but those brave people of Earth that have assisted us in rising this far even with all the problems they've faced in the past would die because of the prejudice of one being. Never again I say, we are the new generation of Unggoy, we will ensure that freedom and safety are always there for our families and allies if need be we will pay for it in our blood or our lives. Are you with me?''

A cry of determination is my answer and they all speed to get ready, good, good that is the spirit, they only needed a reminder. Then I suddenly see Ensign YipYap send something with his personal computer, something called an I-pad 5000 by the humans. ''Ensign Yipyap what did you just do? Why is sending a message to somebody more important then readying yourself for a combat situation, especially as right now that thing wouldn't be able to send any meaningful distance beyond the ship?''

''Well you see Lieutenant, I thought about it and realised some of the others might also need some type of speech. So I recorded yours once I saw you were preparing to give one to us, and sent it to all crew members.'' Oh well it's not too much of a problem, we might help the others too, good thinking of him actually.

''Good idea ensign YipYap, well done. Now continue getting ready for battle.'' After an affirmative ''Sir yes sir!'' that he picked up from that human bootcamp we had two weeks ago he continues putting on his gear, while I leave the barrack and head back to the bridge to report in and see if we already know more about the situation.

Oh well if it does turn hostile, we've got a demon and the strongest non-godly ancilla alive on our side while a small fleet of forty or so ships will be a few minutes of slip-space travel away from supporting us. Meanwhile the Didacts remaining forces, even if he is still alive and fighting himself, are according to intelligence reduced to at most 16 ships, most of whom will be heavily damaged from previous battles.

And if he himself isn't alive those ships will be led by a young hot-headed commanding officer that doesn't have much combat experience outside of glassing campaigns against small lightly defended colonies in the human-covenant war, and probably looks down on both humans and Unggoy, making him relatively easy to surprise and trick during combat.

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Dimension: HALO, Location: the light frigate UNSC Divinity near unknown fore-runner structure, date: 5th of August of the year 2557 of the UNSC military calendar 00.55 hours, POV: Mityat

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I think I now understand why humans have the concept of 'jinxing' a situation. I think I am sadly enough the guilty one in this case. ''Intelligence said they had 16 ships at most and that the majority of them would be damaged, while yes some of the ships over there are damaged, that still doesn't tell us why there are currently twenty-eight enemy ships, with only four of them damaged, surrounding that near moon sized Forerunner structure, which intel also forgot to tell us about!''

Well said my human friend, well said. Just what is going on here? ONI might make mistakes, but those are usually revolving around breaking sentients rights laws or having extremist factions that try to create problems between the UNSC and its allies. Rarely if ever is there an actual mistake in information given to combat personnel in recent times. Especially not mentioning close to half of the opposing force and the fact that they have an extremely large base once created and used by the Gods, or Forerunners as the humans refer to them. So just what could possibly be going on around here?

Then Hallyat spoke up from his station ''Captain, an incoming message from the Forward into the Night, apparently they have been trying to contact you but something has been blocking outgoing messages in the system.'' Ok that makes almost scarily too much sense for it to not be true.

Almost at the same time Yityat, who was currently manning the sensors spoke up ''Captain, as far as I can tell by the sensor information the enemy isn't moving in our direction, nor are their weapons charging so unless they are baiting us for a trap they don't know we are here.''

This caused the captain to react ''Hallyat, clear the communication line up as much as possible then project it in front of my console. Recheck a few times with all sensors YitYat, if this is true we might have a chance to drop people off at the structure without being noticed to investigate this.'' While she was saying this an image of a somewhat older human female appeared on screen ''Commander Margret Williams reporting in captain, we have very disturbing news.'' Not good, not good at all.

The eyes of the captains hard-light body narrowed. ''The flood hasn't gotten loose right? Also this isn't another composer or a differently designed weapon of mass destruction that cleanses all life in the nearest thousands of light years?'' The commander onscreen paled even more if that was possible at the very thought of any of those possibilities, but shook her head in the negative.

''While the situation is not anywhere near as bad as any of those options thankfully, it is still very bad.'' She seemed to gather herself while a small video file opened showing what seemed to be a sped up view of the construction of a slightly older covenant frigate design, the type of which there were also a dozen or so orbiting around the structure, in a way too large dockyard.

''The other good news is that we have found out where on the structure the stations command centre is, we'll send you the coordinates and a visual of the location.'' The commander received it and sent the image through to the Demon since he was in command of our ground forces.

''That was the good news, now we go on to the bad news. Unlike what it may seem, this video wasn't a sped up version of the construction that went on in that place, instead it is of equal speed to reality and is actually the live feed of our cloaked spy drone. This structure is a fully automated shipyard that can construct entire Covenant frigate class ships in any of its dockyards in an estimated time of less than 12 hours. This all while seemingly only needing power to create the entire ship, no actual heavy metals or other finite supplies required because of those being synthetized from the output of whatever generator there is on that thing.

It has half a dozen of these dockyards spread out all over the structure and considering the size of them we fear that the only reason they are producing covenant frigate class ships and not destroyers or cruisers or even carriers is that the system needs to restart and as such they aren't using it to its full capacity yet. Possibly they can also be constructed even faster then what is going on now when the structure is fully operational again. It is very much possible that they are only constructing at this speed because the structure is also producing mechanical soldiers to actually man the ships and that its capacity to do that is relatively low in comparison with its shipbuilding abilities or that if one is in use the other is slowed down badly.''

You could almost see the dread come down on the faces of the bridge crew except for the captain, who remained calm. ''Commander, do you still have a good stock of your nuclear mines and nuclear missile on the ship'' The commander looked like she was getting an inkling of what the captain wanted to do. ''Yes we do captain, our full complement of mines and 2 nuclear missiles, though one of them is relatively weak.'' The captain seemed to give a slight smile at that.

''Good commander Williams, here are your orders, lay down a few nuclear mines near the enemy flag ship, then the remaining ones near that frigate concentration then move away, fire the weaker one of your missiles at the dock with the vessel closest to completion on this side of the structure and the other at the enemy flagship. Then use a slip-space jump to get out of here.

Head towards the nearby Hydra solar system and warn the 14th and 15th patrol flotilla's of the situation and order them to move here to support us. We will in the meantime try to find out if the Didact is anywhere on or near the structure while also keeping the fleet busy to stop them from either moving away themselves or moving the structure away from this location. Are these orders understood and are you capable of following them through?''

The commander nodded ''Yes captain, we can follow these orders through. Though are you sure you'll be able to hold out? No offense but they have a battlecruiser, 2 regular cruisers, 6 destroyers, 16 frigates and 3 corvettes. You on the other hand only command 2 frigates. While the first strike WMD attack will take out a few of the enemy ships, including the flagship and a number of their frigates, they will still have many more and a number of capital ships against your two frigates.''

Causing the captain to respond ''If we die, then we will die fighting this enemy. We will not let them get away, giving them the chance to attempt genocide on the human race once more, especially since we don't know if this thing can move on its own power so we need to find a way to either prevent it from doing so or ensure we are able to follow it when it tries to move.''

The commander nodded at this response. ''If this ends badly, it was an honour knowing you ma'am.'' After saying this the commander salutes the captain and her image fades away, before the Forward into the Night can be seen cloaking, her IFF can be seen moving to accomplish her tasks though. Normally a combat frigate like ours wouldn't actually see that IFF during their stealth operations however it seems that with the new sensor technology they installed we can partially see through the stealth capabilities.

''Are all ground troops ready for a combat drop on the structure's surface?'' I could hear her Demon reply over the comm systems ''Yes, all of the Divinity's combat personnel and vehicles are ready Captain.'' Was that just my imagination or was there affection in his voice when he said captain? Oh well her and the Demon went through a lot together, though I'm not interested in such things myself, it is their own business and they do seem very good for each other, anyways back to the upcoming battle.

''Captain, the Athena responds that their ground forces are also ready for battle. Shall I enact the battle-net allowing all personnel between ships to speak more easily? Or should we wait for a few moments more before doing so?'' She shook her head.

''We cannot connect the battle-net yet, it's a general UNSC code and so either the Didact or one of the more intelligent covenant sensor officers would probably notice if we started it up. Wait until after the missile is fired by the Forward into the Night. After that we will be on our own for approximately 5 minutes. Do open a video connection to the Athena for a moment though''

Hallyat nodded, sending the request and getting a feed. In front of the captain the image of a relatively tall Unggoy appears, commander Yullup. ''Captain Cortana, you have more experience in leading space battles against superior numbers, so I will follow your advice on how to do this. My ground forces are ready for deployment, however our ancilla announced that you had received information from the Forward into the Night, can you give us any news.'' She looked thoughtful for a moment then repeated what the commander of the Forward into the Night had told her, causing the commander to nod.

After she was done with relaying the Forward into the Night's information, seh continued ''The didact won't trust his followers very much nor does he think much of the cyberwarfare capabilities of the current humanity, so I will probably be able to hijack one of their corvettes and have it fire upon the flagship of the enemy fleet, causing the Didact to think the crew is rebelling even if they regain control before the ship is destroyed. This together with the nuclear mine and missiles will give us the chance to take out the corvettes without them being able to respond immediately, leaving a large hole in the defences giving us the chance of landing troops on the surface.

After that we will have to hold our own for roughly four minutes against the opposing fleet until the 14th and 15th patrol flotilla's arrive. I estimate the number of surviving enemy ships will be somewhere between 2 cruisers, 6 destroyers and 6 damaged frigates or 1 damaged battlecruiser, 2 cruisers, 6 destroyers, 8 undamaged frigates and 4 damaged ones by the time we have to engage the fleet in direct combat.''

Commander Yullup looked grim but nodded his acceptation of the plan. ''While not the best option, it is better then anything I can currently think of Captain. Shall I give the order to slowly start moving forward towards the place where we intend to blow a hole in the enemy line?''

She nodded her agreement while saying ''Yes, follow our lead on the front of directions.'' before he saluted her and the image went away again. Afterwards she gave the order to move as silently as possible once she saw that the Forward into the Night had placed most of their mines already, lowering the problems that could be caused by an early detection by the enemy.

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Cortana POV

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''Halt the movement, signal the Athena to do the same.'' After getting an affirmative I looked over the enemy lines to see if any of them might have noticed us yet, no signs of that, good. The Forward into the Night is almost done laying mines, both the Divinity and the Athena are in position to start our attack, meanwhile I have the covenant corvette on the other side of the structure under my passive control without its crew knowing and with a single command I can take direct control of the ship and have it perform an attack run on their flagship.

I turn my still new hard-light body towards our comms officer, Hallyat as he receives a message, normally I would simply be able to read this but controlling the corvette over such a large distance while also providing as much ECM cover for our ships as possible to stop the Battlecruiser from simply detecting us is taking a lot out of me. ''The Forward into the Night signals that they are ready to deploy the missiles on command while their slip-space drive is also warmed up and ready to send them to the Hydra system.''

Here it goes. ''Signal the Forward into the Night and the Athena to be ready for our attack runs, I will start my control of the enemy corvette, now.'' Taking full control of all the opposing ships systems and turning off life support the only crew members still alive are some of the Unggoy and a single Sanghelli that was overseeing the off-loading of supplies. ''Signal the Forward into the Night, start their attack run and detonate the mines, now!''

While he signals the Forward into the Night, I have the corvette, turn towards the battlecruiser and move forward at ramming speed, ignoring the calls from the comms officers of the opposing ships, with the battlecruiser turning its weapons towards the corvette just as they are hit by the Nuke. Nice, it seems to have knocked out most of their systems, including their shields. ''Open fire on the designated corvette.'' As I say this to my crew I have my own corvette fire everything it has at the battlecruiser, more specifically at where I can see the enemy slip-space generator through the hole currently open in the ship.

All three ships hit their marks, with my corvette managing to destroy the slip-space generator, killing the already crippled battlecruiser before the corvette is taken out by one of their cruisers, while both frigates MAC's manage to open a large hole in their designated corvettes, with the Athena's target dying immediately due to them hitting just right to break the enemy ship in two, while our shot only makes a large hole that is then exploited by some archer torpedoes being fired and going in, causing a large explosion that rips the ship in half a dozen pieces.

Now able to use our own ships scanners again, I see that the enemy ships are in a state of complete confusion while the Forward into the Night managed to slip away without them noticing. They are also suddenly 1 battlecruiser, 5 frigates and 3 corvettes short of their previous flotilla with another 5 frigates being damaged, stumping them completely on what just happened. Not the best possible outcome, but close enough that our chances of survival have just gone up severely.

I quickly start up the UNSC battle-net, connecting all the soldiers and sailors, both human and Unggoy, to it while also checking up with Floats-higher-then-average to see if our slip-space generator was still doing alright, which it was, at least that's going well still, let's signal to everyone the network is up and also give a precautionary announcement to our ground pounders.

''Battle-net is up, Master Chief Petty Officer Sierra 117 is in command of all ground forces. We're going to be able to drop you 0.5 kilometres from what seems to be the control station of this structure, if Didact is there either let the Master Chief handle him or signal in air-support, I repeat do not try to handle him yourselves signal in Master Chief or air-support!''

After listening in for a moment to see if the troops were playing nice with each-other, it was the first combat situation between this group of human marines and this group of Unggoy were they actually fought side by side with the respective other species instead of fighting against them after all. Ok that was going much better then expected, nice, though I should probably have expected it since these people were selected specifically for this mission and also have been working together to keep these ships running for a while without too much trouble.

Now lets turn my attention to the opposing forces in space, hmm ok now its nearly certain that the Didact is either not here or at least not in a state to command troops, they are acting like complete and utter idiots. I just hope that he was actually on that battlecruiser we just took out, would be nice for him to finally truly die. Probably too much to hope for though. Still it's a good thing that the intel was correct on the incompetence of their second in command, otherwise we would never have managed to take that battlecruiser down without serious losses.

As we touch down and the troops unload I have a fully formulated plan in mind on how to deal with the enemy ships until our supporting forces arrive. ''Commander Yullup, once our troops are done embarking and we are back in Orbit, let us target the surviving opposing Frigates that were near nuclear mines first, without those we should be able to outmanoeuvre the enemy long enough for our re-enforcements to arrive.''

This resulted in a near immediate reply of ''Yes captain, we will do so as soon as possible, are our troops done embarking yet and has their air coverage been able to leave the ships?'' This question got a response from John before I could give an answer or inquire to him.

''Yes sir, all troops are done embarking, we are only waiting for the Pelican of the Athena to leave the Hangar, it had moved during our atmospheric entry. Everything is out now, ground operations are ready to go! Good luck in space captain, commander.'' John is unusually talkative, hopefully its our new relationship having a positive effect on him and allowing him to bring out his social skills a bit more. Thoughts for later, focus on the battle for now. As we lift off I hear one of the pilots send a message.

''Pelican 1-3-0 to ground forces, watch out there is a group numbering at least battalion strength Storm Covenant troops nearing your position. Seems to be mainly infantry and not acknowledging my presence, four kilometres out. We will do what we can to lower their number but their only vehicles are mechanised anti-air guns, so we will not be able to perform more than one airstrike.''

Damnit we can't give them orbital support, that would leave us completely open to the enemy ships. Sigh, I'll just need to trust in John's capabilities to lead them through this without much damage. And now we're back in space ok, the cruisers are still trying to find out what is going on apparently, though a few of the destroyers seem to realise what is wrong and are moving to fire at us. Oh well, we'll have to improvise.

''Athena we're going to use their numbers against them, prepare for close quarters. Slave your archer targeting systems to ours for the moment'' I felt myself gaining control of them, ok now to use this. ''I'm targeting the outermost frigates, we're going to storm at full power into the middle group to dodge the shots their destroyers are charging up.''

While saying this I fire the archers, killing 2 of the less damaged frigates on the outer edge of the group and crippling a third. The Athena follows our lead in charging through the centre, with one of the destroyers halting fire instead of risking friendly fire while two of the remaining five hit an already crippled frigate while we're passing by, killing it. Then I feel the ship rock harshly and notice immediately that the third, fourth and fifth shots hit our shields in almost the exact same spot, with the shields barely holding on and causing some hull damage but most dangerously heating up that section of the ship badly. ''Starboard shields down to 25%.''

While not deadly for our crewmembers luckily enough, it was bad enough to fry the navigational systems for the slip-space drive, meaning that while we could still jump we had no database at all to pull locations from nor could we store any until the thing was repaired. Damnit! This caused the cruisers to finally notice we're actually there, making them turn in our direction. We manage to dodge theirs and the destroyers follow up shots by using the debris of the Battlecruiser to our advantage, but that isn't going to work for long after this. We need something, and fast.

Wait our MAC has recharged, if I then use it against that ship while also firing using our anti-fighter systems when they fire for close quarters combat… yes that might actually work! ''Athena we're going to close in with that cruiser closest to our current location, and use him having to drop his shield to charge and fire his main gun to take out not only said gun, but also most of their secondary weapons then use the ship and the surrounding debris as an improvised shield against the other cruiser and the destroyers, understood?!''

After getting an affirmative I initiated the action, and when the ship lowered the lower frontal shield for a second to fire the next shot I targeted it with our defence lasers, taking out the hull based shield projector, and ordered ''Fire all weapons into the gap!''

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Yulluk POV

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''Enemy main gun taken out, their main bridge is also destroyed by a lucky archer hit! Though sadly enough someone in either their secondary bridge or their engineering section managed to reroute shields form other areas so the gap in the shields has been closed off. Enemy defence lasers are firing, but for now they are relatively inaccurate due to the quick switch from control area.'

The captains crazy plan actually worked! Let's hope the re-enforcements show up soon though, our chances of surviving for more then a few more minutes are very low now that they actually know where we are and have re-organised themselves. ''Enemy Destroyers are charging towards us supported by the three surviving enemy frigates, while the other enemy cruiser is holding position and will likely keep doing so to fire at us if we try to move far enough away from this one to make sure there is no risk of friendly fire. Shields currently at 85% from the enemy defence laser hits, stabilizing now. What are your orders commander?''

''Bring us down to the lower starboard side of this cruiser, we need to ensure we can cut off any enemy attempt at flanking the Divine, then fire the MAC at the frontmost '' I got no further before a blue beam shot out from the cruiser next to us cancelling our artificial gravity, while theirs and the other cruisers hangars opened and both started expelling fighters. While the fighters started hitting us together with the defence lasers the larger enemy ships had luckily not arrived yet.

''Damnit status report! Also captain, please come cover us our artificial gravity got knocked out by an enemy shot!'' Luckily helms managed to bring us below the ruined section of the cruiser, meaning we were now out of range from both their surviving defence lasers and that strange EMP weapon.

''Commander, I can restart artificial gravity, our ability to fire torpedoes and our MAC, all of whom were taken out, however it will ruin our slip-space drive.'' Damnit, but we're dead for sure without either of those first two. ''The Divine has arrived to cover us sir, and they managed to take out one of the enemy frigates however they are in need of support badly! While the enemy fighters are being butchered by our combined defences, one of the enemy destroyers is nearly breaking through the Divine's weakened shields!''

''Do it, without the MAC or the artificial gravity we'll be too dead to use slip-space in less than a minute anyways!'' The MAC and gravity came back online, thank the Gods. ''Fire the MAC and all remaining archers on the destroyer currently duelling with the Divine, then take their place at the front so their shields can recharge!'' The order was followed fervently, with the MAC shot being caught by the enemy shields, but the following swarm of Archer torpedoes from both us and the Divine managed to break through and take them out of the fight.

While we moved to relieve the Divine and take on the main force of enemy ships, the captain sent a message over the battle-net. ''The ground team managed to destroy whatever was blocking our communications, I just got an incoming message of Rear-admiral Dresden whom is in charge of the re-enforcements, they will be here in less than 20 seconds! Once they exit slip-space, we'll head to the structure in a defensive retreat as soon as possible to give orbital support to the ground troops.''

As she was saying this slip-space anomalies are detected, and shortly after I can see UNSC ships storming out, their command ship ramming into the other enemy cruiser, throwing it off balance and starting a duel between the two of them while another cruiser and a frigate went to support the UNSC ship, in the meantime most of the remaining ships fired MAC shots at whatever destroyer or frigate they found close to them, destroying 3 of the destroyers and the two remaining frigates immediately causing all remaining enemies to turn to face the UNSC fleet.

The remaining UNSC cruiser turned to face the Storm Covenant cruiser situated above us, while the captain connected our battle-net to the one setup by the other UNSC ships. Seconds later the Rear-Admiral Dresden could be heard. ''Excellent work Divine, Athena, head to the planet we'll take care of the remaining ships in space and land troops on the enemy docks once finished. I'll personally see to it all of you are receiving commendations and medals for this.''

While we started heading towards the structure and entered however a message was sent through the battle-net by the Demon ''Rear-admiral, do not land troops on the structure sir, I repeat do not land troops! The Didact has set the thing to self-destruct in the next eight minutes, and the blast-wave will spread throughout the region too fast, it's effects will cause a lightspeed blast-wave that will reach up to .1 lightyears from this location! We need evac immediately if we are to make it off the structure in time!''

Damnit! Even if he is part of the Gods, no especially if he's part of the race of Gods, what is that idiot thinking! Even with the speed advantage his ships would have had over the old UNSC ones, the slip-space engines of his forces take a lot longer to warm up then ours, there is simply no chance of them actually making it out in time! And after having just jumped here less then a minute ago, the UNSC ships will also take 5 or 6 minutes to warm theirs up to actually get out of here, just how are we going to make it out in time while also saving the ground forces?

Because there is no way in hell we're leaving them behind. Wait, even if we save them in time we don't actually have a working slip-space generator anymore. Damnit this situation keeps getting worse. ''Athena, this is captain Cortana, we're going to have to go in to retrieve the troops, the boots on the surface have found something that might get us out of here fast enough even with our dis-functional Slip-space engines.'' Finally some good news.

''You heard the captain, follow her lead. It might very well be the only hope for not only us but also the ground forces.'' This got nods in return and we raced towards the surface to pick them up. Let us hope we make it in time and that this way out actually works.

.

**And that was the first chapter of the story. I hope that the space-battle was interesting, if not, please review and tell me what I can do to optimise it, but also do note that I will be more likely to listen to it if it is written down in a polite manner instead of straight up insulting my capabilities as a writer.**

Now, for anyone that thinks the fight was very unbalanced, that's how it was supposed to be. It was supposed to show just how far the Storm Covenant had fallen on the officers front by this point, how experienced and capable Cortana was as a commander and just how badly the balance of ship quality and technology had shifted between UNSC + their allies and the Covenant Remnants.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is this: from the start, Systems Alliance humanity will not become just another client species to the Citadel Council in this fiction, even if they join. My reasoning behind this is relatively simple: in Mass Effect humanity is the second/third most populated species at 2157, just 2 billion ahead of the Batarians, roughly equal with the Salarians and 4 billion behind the Asari.

By the time 2183 comes around, humanity is ahead of the Salarians and only 1 billion behind the Asari. And this is with the whole 'more than half of humanity still lives on their home-world' thing included. To give a good view of just what numbers I'm talking about, in 2183 humanity in canon ME has only about 15 billion people give or take, non-system alliance humans included.

Populations in the ME galaxy are as I've already said multiple times in my other stories, tiny. As far as I know the population numbers in comparison to more realistic sci-fi universes is also one of the largest problems in crossover fanfictions with Mass Effect, behind how to number 1 make Citadel Council forces technologically realistically stand a chance against other sci-fi series.

For reference, the lowest possible number of deaths in the human covenant war on the human side from combat alone was some 36 billion. The more likely number of deaths caused directly be the human-covenant war, with the direct death count of both sides due to glassing, sabotage and food shortages caused by destruction of breadbasket worlds included, we come at a rough 65 billion deaths.

And this was in a 30 year during war, only a few years after which people and governments that fought on both sides of that war were forced to work together by various things, and even with bad relations there are still Alliances between the UNSC and former Covenant factions even before a large new threat emerges. With the only human group that is really trying to break it up from their own side being an intelligence organisation afraid of losing the power it enjoyed during the war.

The 'Krogan Rebellions' on the other hand have a direct death count of less than 10 billion, most of them soldiers for one faction or another spread over centuries. And the Salarians still aren't managing to work together with them more than a millennium after this when tens of thousands of mechanical space squids that double as destroyer and capital ships that see them as little more than wheat to be harvested come along to kill them all.

Hell, all three Council governments literally feel the need to doom the Krogan to extinction for that single war a thousand years later through the slaughter of Krogan new-born, with as far as I know the only ones against it being some human sentients rights groups before the Reapers invade. Only then do the Turian and Asari governments decide: ''Fuck let's stop blaming them for that war, we need them by our side if we want to survive this.''

And number 2 how to realistically make the Reapers into an actual true threat to other governments of other sci-fi universes outside of just throwing millions of capital ship Reapers at them or making every single one as strong as the small number of strongest ones (Harbringer for example) are in Canon.

I'm not making a joke in the part about people having to ponder on how to make the Reapers a viable threat by the way, the strongest ship-based main gun I know of in HALO is in the triple digit megatons, admittedly a Forerunner main gun but still that shows just what kind of battles HALO has had in the past, especially since this is far from the strongest weapon in HALO, only the strongest one based on a ship.

The strongest UNSC gun that can be used on their ships I know of however still deals damage in the double digit megatons. And that while such ships also have an assortment of nuclear missiles, more than 1 main gun, plasma projectors, hundreds or even thousands of regular ship to ship missile launchers, secondary smaller calibre broadside-MAC's, their laser based AA systems, projectile based AA systems and usually also an A.I. that can wipe the floor with not only the council but potentially also the Reapers in cyber warfare.

This all with the addition that the fastest FTL drive the UNSC has goes some 1500 lightyears a day. The strongest Reaper main gun is meanwhile roughly 400 kilotons while the fastest Reaper non-relay FTL is about 40 lightyears a day. And the main gun, their tentacle lasers and their indoctrination are also the only weapons Reaper capital ships have.

And HALO isn't even the strongest, hell it's one of the mediocre ones overall power wise, because they try to make everything as realistic as possible technology wise while still making it different enough to be interesting. Also what some people don't realize is that because of the people from ME using Eezo as the main, nearly the only technological branch, Council ships have extremely little in the form of armour and thus are usually one hit kills from even single missiles once their shields are down.

This means that the frigates from most other sci-fi universes that have literally all their weapons disabled by something or the other could use their much faster FTL to travel to point-blank range with an ME dreadnought, have their armour simply take the hits of the GARDIAN systems as they exit FTL and then ram the dreadnought in real-space.

The end result would be a dead dreadnought, with maybe, and I have to repeat maybe, some hull breaches and the death of an already crippled frigate due to the dreadnought's Eezo core exploding as it dies. And there goes one of the less than 90 dreadnoughts all council races working together have, while the other side in worst case scenario loses one of the thousands upon thousands of frigates each faction has flying under their banner.

This all makes any scenario in which a true to canon Council actually wins the campaign for Shanxi while bringing along anything less than a third or even half of the entire Turian Fleet to take it extremely unlikely.

Thanks for reading everyone, hope you liked it. Please review on what is and isn't good about this story.


	2. Prequel chapter 2

In the name of Earth and Balaho, till the bitter end!

Prequel part 2, The Didacts last stand

If you are only here to read the story, not listen to an explanation of anything, skip to the next not bold sentence

**Please remember I started writing in this before I even posted the first chapter, so I will only have started implementing the comments about how it can be done more efficiently somewhere halfway through writing this. Also if any beta-reader reads this and thinks: this guy needs help, his stories all actually need help. I would love the assistance.**

**I don't actually have a beta-reader despite searching for one multiple times. This means that I have to reread my stories multiple times looking for mistakes all over. Considering those mistakes have been made by myself, the chances of me picking them up are lower then if somebody else looked into it.**

So any interested beta-readers, please message me and I'll gladly accept the assistance. Anyways now that that's done, lets get on with the disclaimer.

**Disclaimer: I don't own either HALO or Mass Effect, if I did I wouldn't be writing this story, instead it would be the script of a new game involving both franchises. With probably much more interesting action scenes and interactions due to me only giving a general outline of the whole project and actually professional scriptwriters doing everything else.**

Dimension: HALO, Location: the light frigate UNSC Divinity near unknown fore-runner structure, date: 5th of August of the year 2557 of the UNSC military calendar 00.59 hours (The moment when Cortana orders the attack run to start)

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Master Chief POV

**.**

I can feel the ship firing its main gun beneath us, and with me all others here feel the same thing. Looking around for a moment I can see that they are all ready for the oncoming battle. Some seem to be praying, others are checking their weapons, a few soldiers are staring at me in some kind of hero-worship, the usual.

I can feel the UNSC battle-net powering up, everyone becomes silent the moment I raise my hand to get said silence. ''Battle-net is up,'' a bit unnecessary Cortana, though with the current situation of the new arrivals they might not have known it as well so makes some sense to state this first.

''Master Chief Petty Officer Sierra 117 is in command of all ground forces. We're going to be able to drop you 0.5 kilometres from what seems to be the control station of this structure, if Didact is there either let the Master Chief handle him or signal in air-support, I repeat do not try to handle him yourselves signal in Master Chief or air-support.''

Taking the chance to speak up after the message stops, I can now give them a rough plan. ''Speed and the element of surprise are our main advantages in this battle, and outside of across the board troop quality probably also our only advantages. We are going to move towards that command post as fast as possible, however chances are high that there are a number of static defences, leave those to me and the air support while you all concentrate on getting inside the building as fast as possible while taking out any enemy infantry blocking your way.

We need to be inside before enemy armoured divisions or air units of any kind can respond to our attack.'' All soldiers nodded at this. ''Speaking of air support, Flight lieutenant d'Alain, are our pelicans fully ready for battle? Are they also positioned well enough to be able to leave the ship upon our ships getting down to the ground?''

''Yes Sir, the pelicans are ready and will depart the moment the infantry has left the ship. I do have to caution you again sir, that after the first five or so minutes our air superiority over the Covenant wannabe's will probably be over, after that we will be fighting any bird they can get up into the air. So we'll need to do something to the IFF system of the automated defences on both the target base and wherever they have their areal fighters some time before that.''

I already knew this, but it is good that all troops know it in case I get incapacitated during the battle. I felt the ship touch down and the hangar doors started opening. Ordering ''Go, go, go!'' while charging out myself with the others forming a perimeter on me as I get into position, I looked around to see that no enemies were hidden anywhere nearby that the ship might have missed.

''Clear!'' after hearing the all clear sign being repeated by the officers in other areas our ship's pelican flew out. Where is the other one? ''Sir our pelican moved during the descend into atmosphere, we have to move more carefully or else we will hit the roof of the Hangar.'' This was happening while I was listening on the conversation between commander Yullup and Cortana, causing me to reply to his question.

''Yes sir, all troops are done embarking, we are only waiting for the Pelican of the Athena to leave the Hangar, it had moved during our atmospheric entry.'' I noticed that the other pelican was now flying out of the Athena. ''Everything is out now, ground operations are ready to go! Good luck in space captain, commander.'' Good luck Cortana, you're going to need it as much more than I do this time around.

I switch over to the in-atmosphere part of the battle-net. ''Move out, the entrance of the enemy command centre has been marked, the marker should show up on your HUD's.'' We moved out at a good pace, though for me its only a light jog, for most beings I know this would have been close to sprinting.

''Pelican 1-3-0 to ground forces, watch out there is a group numbering at least battalion strength Storm Covenant troops nearing your position. Seems to be mainly infantry and not acknowledging my presence, less than four kilometres out from the base. We will do what we can to lower their number but their only vehicles are mechanised anti-air guns, so we will not be able to perform more than one airstrike.''

Damnit, we're only slightly more than two companies in strength ourselves. ''Double-time it,'' We're going to need to take out the garrison of the command post before they arrive, otherwise we'll be pinned between the command posts garrison and this battalion while we're also being harassed by the enemy air-force and on top of this we wouldn't even have cover. ''the compound is 40 meters past this hill.''

Why did the Forerunners actually have this obsession with having their stations look like actual planets? Never-mind, its an advantage for us. I scale the hill, drop to a knee and aim my Spartan Laser before firing it, obliterating both the armoured door and whatever enemies had been near it on the other side, the moment its done firing I sling it onto my back and take out my hard-light carbine, charging through the newly opened door.

The moment I enter enemies start firing at me from the western side of the room, causing me to turn. While I return fire, I take in the situation. Two Unggoy soldiers with plasma pistols behind what seems to be overturned furniture, the two Sanghelli I'm exchanging fire with that are standing out in the open with plasma carbines and three mechanical opponents all wielding plasma pistols.

While taking this in I manage to take out the shields of the Sanghelli major on the left, putting three rounds in his head immediately afterwards, before charging towards the Sanghelli minor as he is switching his carbine for a plasma sword. Me shoulder checking him, thus throwing him into the wall and probably delivering a concussion before I grasp his plasma sword out of the air as its falling and stabbing him in the chest with it prevents him from fulfilling this action.

A quick look around shows that while I was busy with the Sanghelli the first marines charged into the compound and were now filling the unshielded enemy Unggoy with lead, making the decision for me on what opponent to take on next as I charge towards the mechanical enemies, grabbing the closest one before throwing him at the one furthest away from me while beheading the last one with the plasma sword, before stomping through the heads of the mech's on the ground once each.

Taking a moment to look around the room while I store my new plasma sword on my hip, I realise it is much larger then I originally thought, and also a better defensive position if you have enough people to actually man it decently. ''Sergeant Mikhail, take your squad and investigate the area upstairs, according to scans there is nobody there but do watch out, I might not be able to detect these mechanised opponents when their bodies are offline.''

This got me nods and a salute as a reaction, causing me to turn to the commanding officer of the first expeditionary company, captain second rank Dimitri Gorbatsjov ''Captain as of now you are in charge of the defence against the approaching battalion, you will have your own company plus both the first and the second platoon of the second expeditionary company to assist you.

Half of the third platoon of the second expeditionary company will join me in going to face the remaining garrison and whomever is in command of this structure, while the other half of said platoon will form a reserve force, bound to support either group depending on whom needs it the most.''

He saluted and went to organise the defence, however at that moment the commander of the second expeditionary company, an Unggoy confederacy lieutenant called Yiwiz spoke up ''Sir a question, will I be going down with you or will I be in command of the units of my units stationed up here?''

''You'll join me, you not only know the capabilities of your men better than I do, you also have more intimate knowledge of how to use both covenant and Forerunner systems then any of the other troops currently with us do,'' I see him a bit confused, but still smiling at the compliment and he salutes before calling the second platoon towards us.

It is the truth: while I've been on a much larger Forerunner structures then him, Cortana was always the one actually interacting with the technology. I just dealt with whatever enemies were nearby. And the only other one in both companies that has ever actually been to a forerunner structure besides the former covenant capital is Captain Gorbatsjov.

Once the Unggoy are all here, we descend down the stairwell, meeting no resistance except for what seems to be a mechanical armed with only a plasma pistol, that dies from a shot through the head from my carbine. This is too easy, way too easy. Either a trap of some kind, or we have false intelligence and this is only a decoy instead of the real command post.

''Something is wrong here, in case you notice anything suspicious, fire at will.'' I say through our internal comms, gaining affirmatives from the entire group. As we walk up to a door I use the infrared function of my suit to scan the Hallway through the closed door, I can see enemies behind a barricade set up a dozen or so metres to the left of the door.

I hold up my hand to halt the advance of our soldiers and notify them of this. ''Ready your grenades, there is an enemy presence roughly a dozen metres to the left of the door behind some barricades. Lieutenant, you know how to open doors like this right?'' as I see the mass of heat that has the IFF tag of the lieutenant nod at this, I continue on. ''Good, go man whatever device that will allow you to open it.''

He calls up a wrist-computer and seems to type a few things before replying ''Ready when you are sir.'' Okay, that is a surprise. Had expected it to harder to operate the door on a forerunner base that has an actual fore-runner operating the damn thing, but anyways. Let's not look a gift horse in the mouth. Though on the other hand it might be a trap so I will need to watch out even more so than before.

''Lieutenant open the door once I finish counting down. I'll throw in a flashbang first so that they do not realize exactly where all the other grenades land and as such won't be able to dodge them. While this will take care of our organic opponents, it probably won't take out many if any of their mechanical assistants, once the grenades have gone off I'll storm in the room to take their attention and take those down.

First and second squad follow my lead, the remainder of you take out any enemy organic soldiers still alive and take their weapons if there's something useful still left intact after we blow up the room. In case of an ambush, form up using strategy two centred just behind my position, is that understood?''

I get affirmative replies through our comms though they are silent so as to not possibly let enough sound escape for the enemy to notice there was somebody here. I first tag the area where most of the heat sources are as to give the other's a more specific target, then start counting down with my hand.

The moment I reach zero, the lieutenant opens the door allowing me to thrown the flashbang in causing the enemy forces to start firing at an enemy that hasn't entered. The lieutenant closes the door again for a second, then reopens it after the flashbang has gone off.

In the meantime I had already grabbed a new grenade, throwing it in the direction of some heat sources not in the area I had tagged for the platoon to target. Seconds later while I'm bringing my carbine to bear the grenades explode, giving me the opportunity to charge into the room, only to be greeted by plasma fire slamming into my shields, upon which I see a group of three Sanghelli and nine mechanical troops on the other side of the room behind a barricade of overturned furniture firing at me with plasma carbines.

While making this observation I'm already firing at the mechanical troops while moving towards them, tagging them also to give my support targets. While five of the mechanicals die from hard-light shots, the remaining four die due to plasma shots of my supporting forces that are now moving into the room behind me. Shields are getting low, need to kill these fast.

The shields of the rightmost Sanghelli are the first to fail, before his face gets removed from its original location by a plasma shot, allowing me to target the central enemy whom decides its now a good idea to abandon this position and instead charge forward with a sword in hand. Young and impulsive probably. Won't have the time to learn either.

As I think of this Spartan Time kicks in, allowing me to take down the charging Sanghelli with a few shots into his left eye, before my shields fail due to the shots of the last Sanghelli. Before he can take advantage of this however, my Unggoy support breaks his shields, allowing me to put two rounds into his head.

While he falls to the ground I check the room around me, apparently the Unggoy had formed up in a line behind me with the shield function of their wrist computers activated as ordered, with a few of those not needed in the line checking for signs of life among where the enemies of the targeted area of our grenades was.

''Good. The enemies on the far side of the room had gear that allowed them to escape heat detection but don't seem to have had any kind of stealth cloak on. We can't trust thermal sight to actually show us all opponents, however visual should work better.'' I look around the room again and notice a computer of sorts on the other end of the room.

''Lieutenant, go towards that thing and see if you can find a floor plan on the thing. Everyone else, grab energy swords from the downed Sanghelli if they have any, I have the feeling we're going to need them.'' After getting affirmative replies from them I go and stand guard at the door out of the room, though thermal sight doesn't show any enemies in the next hallway, it had already failed me once so not taking any chances anymore.

The lieutenant then called out to me, seemingly very happy with what he discovered ''Sir, I have the floor plan, was easy to find for some reason, however one thing: according to the logs the entire base has only got some fifty units in it, with the fallen God probably having been confident nobody would find them this soon.

Even better news, the mechanical troops were included in the unit count!'' The troops in the room looked up from scavenging enemy weapons and cheered at this, which while a bit overreacting, it is good news that we won't have to fight our way through an entire regiment of enemies.

Let's see, there were only ten guards upstairs, with three of them having died due to the laser shot before they could even fight back. Then one more dead on the stairwell, with 8 having died here due to our grenades and the twelve ambushers. That's a total of thirty-one dead opponents, and nineteen guards remaining. However we don't know one crucial thing. ''Tell me, is there any evidence on if the Didact is actually already here?''

After roughly twenty tense seconds, the lieutenant turned towards me ''Sir you were right, the Didact is here.'' This seemed to dim the mood of our troops badly. ''The good news is that he seems to be in a less then optimal state, meaning you will probably have an easier time fighting him then you did last time around.''

That is good news. ''When we get to him, you and the others take out the remaining storm covenant soldiers first while I go and face the Didact in a one on one fight. After that, deliver long range support but be ready to defend yourselves with the gathered plasma swords in case he decides to charge against you instead of having a duel with me.''

The gathered soldiers looked noticeably frightened at the prospect of having to take on an enemy more than four times their size in close quarter combat, especially since that someone is part of a race most of them have been praying to as if they were Gods for most of their lives. However they seem to steel themselves and exchange some nods before turning towards the lieutenant and all saying a phrase in the Unggoy main language, Balohan.

He nods in acceptance and turns towards me. ''We will follow you till the end sir, for Earth and Balaho. We won't let this mad fool ruin our people's chances at finally having freedom instead of being little more then slaves, nor will we let him kill the race that actually gave us that chance to once again decide our own fates in the first place.''

As one they salute me after this, repeating the cry their lieutenant gave. ''For Earth and Balaho.'' This puts a smile on my face, this is a group of men and women I'm proud to fight side by side with. ''For Earth and Balaho. I am proud to serve besides you all now we shall move to remove this threat against the survival of both our species. Shield formation behind me as we continue, I want there to be no way for the enemy to get past us using stealth of any kind.''

''Sir, yes sir.'' I take the lead, ensuring the next hallway is clear while they form up behind me. As we advance further, I notice a shimmer in the air. Cloaked enemy perhaps? ''Ready yourselves, I think I saw a cloaked opponent in the hallway. Once I start firing, lay down a field of suppressive fire on my sides while those directly behind me will continue moving up to form up on my position once the flanks stop firing.''

After gaining affirmatives from them, I aimed my rifle down the hallway in the opposite direction of my cloaked enemy, acting as if I was just sweeping my rifle to accurately target potential threats.

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Yiwiz POV

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Readying myself I saw the Demon open fire causing me and Zliz beside me to run the short distance forward while our flanks provided fire support to the Spartan. ''Hold fire'' They stopped firing on command, allowing me and Zliz to stop besides the Spartan with our shields active while firing down the hallway at a charging mechanical construct, everything else already having been taken care of.

Two of my plasma bolts through its torso later all of them were dead, 8 bodies, six mechanical and two Sanghelli. ''Ambush taken out, I am moving forward, Lieutenant Yiwiz, corporal Zliz, stay at my side. Corporal Jetz, Private Niln and Private Japlat have rear-guard duty for the moment. Everyone else ensure all enemies are dead. This is too easy.''

As I move to follow him, I'm thinking on his last words. Why did they try to ambush us in a mostly clear hallway with only small alcoves at the sides? According to the floor plan of the building there should be a much more suitable location in the room down the stairs some 50 meters from here?

This really does seem way too easy for any even half-decent commander to be leading our opponents, and the enemy commanding officer was the leader of the Gods in a centuries long war with both the humans and the flood, how could he potentially be this foolish? Might this just have been an attempt at slowing us down?

No matter, we have the demon with us and for once all of us have not only decent equipment but also a numerical advantage while the enemy units have older and not too well maintained gear. Any plans they have are doomed to fail from the start with both of those things factored in.

On the other hand he does have access to troops capable of a personal slip-space jump over short distances, maybe he is gathering those to his current location? But then why would he use these soldiers as an ambush against us and not his troops that can literally teleport behind us or just away from us the moment we discover their location slowing down our advance severely?

Sigh, thinking on it doesn't really do me much good, I'll just focus on the here and now. As we walk towards the stairs and take firing positions on top of them for now. ''All enemies are truly dead sir, nothing much of anything special either about their gear besides very basic stealth cloaks, plasma swords on the Sanghelli and some plasma cutlasses for the mechanical constructs. We have taken the liberty to arm those of us that didn't have swords yet with those things.''

''Good, now form up in a shield formation behind my position again, and stick to the original plan if possible with one change, the rear-guard stays rear-guard unless the situation changes drastically, this whole situation just screams 'trap' to me.'' He's probably right on that one, this might be too easy. There are way too few soldiers here, he should have been counting on a UNSC or Sword of Sanghellios task force finding him at some point right?

Or maybe we're thinking about this entirely the wrong way. Maybe he thought such a group would be able to find him soon, however that he would not be in this location to be found long before that? No matter, right now I need to focus on what is currently going on. The Demon signs us to stop, what has he noticed that I haven't? Checking the map I see the next room is somewhat large, maybe he thinks there will be another ambush attempt in there?

''There is a number of heat signatures in the next room, including one that is much taller then all others. The didact is most likely in there. Hold yourselves to the plan.'' Take out everyone that is not the didact, then assist the Demon by providing cover fire during his fight with the Didact, got it. As we all nodded to his orders, he gave a nod back and moved to the door.

We moved to the sides and behind him, rifles and a shield wall at the ready, when a 5 second countdown appeared on my HUD. 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… ''Breach!'' As the demon says this through our comms he kicks in the doors before charging into the room, firing as he goes.

''Forward! For Earth and Balaho!'' My war cry is met by chorus of shouts from the men ''For Earth and Balaho!'' as they charge forward into the breach with me. As I get in I can already see the damage the Demon, whom is now locked in some kind of close quarters fight with the Fallen God, has brought upon them, 2 of the 5 Sanghelli in the room are dead, with another 3 out of the 6 Mechanical opponents also being dead.

A good time to add more to it! I take aim and fire at one of the remaining mechanicals, taking it down in 3 hits, while the other two are taken down by the combined fire of the others. This causes the Sanghelli to notice our arrival and they are forced to turn away from trying to support their mad God and instead face us, but it isn't going well for them.

By the time they've managed to take aim at us, we're already firing at their positions, though they are behind decent cover and are also using it much more effectively than all the other groups we've encountered so far seemed capable of. ''Damnit! Medic!'' As I heard the cry from my right I looked to see a nightmare come true, Zliz had been hit an enemy plasma bolt over his shield and against his head while we weren't fully formed up yet.

His helmet seems to have stopped most of the damage the thing would have caused but now a grenade is falling through the hole in our shield line. ''Grenade on right flank!'' as I shout this we shift the formation while Niln runs out to try to save Zliz, but it was too late now not only for Zliz but both of them.

Zliz is incinerated immediately by the plasma, while Niln gets thrown against the wall, possibly alive, but just as likely to not be so. I need to be strong for the men, ''Japlat, go treat Niln as well as you can, Jetz cover him, everyone else, coordinated fire to ensure those damn bastards pay!'' After shouting this I once again open fire on the Sanghelli, with the one that had thrown the grenade dieing in seconds from multiple shots, each of them through one of his many jaws, while another is killed by half a dozen shots through his chest.

Take that you bastards! Nearly as one we turn to the last surviving Sanghelli who dies soon after this from a dozen plasma bolts hitting all over his body. Okay now let's see what we can do about the Mad God… okay yes now even in my grief driven mind I can understand why the ancilla was so adamant about regular troops like us not trying to face him on our own and instead calling in the demon.

They are moving fast enough that I can barely follow their movements, never-mind actually standing a chance in battle if the Mad God decides to come close to us. He would almost certainly be able to dodge it if we decided to fire without the Demon there to distract him in close quarters even if we all fired at once, however now even if he manages to dodge or simply take the shots head on it will give the Demon an opening to wound him, potentially fatally.

I start giving out orders ''Second squad, guard the medic and wounded, first squad on me, we're going to try to assist the Demon here.'' They look around nervously for a moment, seeing the impossibly fast dance of death the demon and the Mad God are holding, but then once again see Zliz on the ground and determination returns to their eyes.

With this second squad starts moving towards where Niln is still being treated while the still healthy members of first squad join me. ''We're going to perform tactic Hector 2A on the Mad God and hope it is enough to give the Spartan a chance to slip through his defence and take him out.'' All three of them seem to like this idea a lot if the grim smiles on their faces are anything to judge by.

.

Master Chief POV

.

Parrying a strike his, performing a counter-attack only for that to get either blocked or parried, and over again. We'd been going at it like this for the past few minutes, but unless something changed I would eventually be defeated under his experience with our weapons of choice and his superior physical capabilities.

The only reason I'm even keeping even with him right now is the combination of the Librarians upgrades to my physical body and the fact that he had a relatively small wound on his left leg that was slowing him down slightly. Still barely enough for me to fight on equal ground to him, but good enough nonetheless for at least ten more minutes of fighting.

Then I heard the lieutenant yell ''Hector 2A!'' through my comms, causing me to jump against the nearby wall before using it as a boost to throw myself out of their line of fire, upon which the Didact was momentarily surprised before he moved to follow me but got 4 very large supercharged plasma shots to the chest that threw him against the wall on the other side of the room before he had moved more than a few

Taking the chance, I charged forward towards him again and just as he was starting to get up again I kicked away his sword before stabbing him through his throat, pinning him onto the wall by way of the sword. As there seemed to be still more then enough life in him I pulled my carbine from my back, pressed the barrel against the some skin on his head not covered by his helmet and put half a dozen shots straight into it, finally killing him.

For the first time I had a moment to look at my HUD display with the vitals of my support units, only to find that one of them was dead and another critically injured. Looking to where they were right now I saw that on the ground there was one nearly completely burned corpse, the IFF tag signalling him as corporal Zliz.

Against the wall surrounded by significantly smaller shield wall then before I can see private Niln being treated for his injuries by private Japlat while the Lieutenant and three others were throwing down their now melted plasma carbines before the Lieutenant unhooks his plasma sword, with the others arming themselves with their plasma cutlasses.

''I'll ensure all hostiles are dead before moving on alone, lieutenant you look into that computer to find out just what the hell they were doing down here that required the Didacts personal attention, the actual housing area for and general control room of the structure is further into the structure according to the map we gained from that computer.''

I signalled the three soldiers with the Lieutenant and one soldier from second squad ''You four guard him while he tries to find this out, everyone else guard the medic and the wounded. We should have had several enemies teleport in to try to kill us long before this. Something is seriously wrong here.''

They all nodded at this and I got affirmative replies from them all over our comms, causing me to go over to the area where the dead hostiles were gathered. Hmm, all actually dead except for that one a simple stab to the throat solves that issue, done. Now to move on and search the remainder of this place.

This door just slides open as I approach it causing me to be somewhat wary, but after looking around the next room it shows no enemies, also no signs of stealth cloaks of any kind being used. Moving forward again the moment I reach the next door it also opens automatically without any problems.

After I've looked around it seems that once again there is no enemy. It seems the main computer in the room is active, however said computer is supposed to contain the local structure's ancilla though I cannot see it anywhere. I do see a timer of some kind on the main screen but the numbers are in the Forerunner numerical language so I cannot read them myself. As I approach I'm contacted by the lieutenant who seems very stressed.

''Captain we've got a big problem, it turns out that he was here to try and stop us for long enough for the station to get away from the location, apparently he has a bomb locked on the other side of the structure near one of the shipyards, the bomb will go off in only slightly more than eight minutes.

Nowhere near enough time for us to not only get through the battalion troops guarding it but also learn how to understand how it works and then de-activate it manually and from here we cannot do a thing about it without both the didacts handprint and his voice saying specific code words.''

What. That doesn't make any form of sense at all. Why would he have such a thing primed and ready? ''How the hell did he think he would get out of here in time? And for that matter how would the station get away in time?''

''Apparently he had this as an already pre-planned way of covering up all evidence he was ever in the area, and the reason why he did this on the station here is the thing, apparently this station can move on its own and has a giant slip-space drive which would open a portal large enough for not only the station itself but also a number of ships near it.

They would simply demagnetize the bomb and set it to only start the timer once the station actually started moving, with its full timer having been close to ten minutes. It would have cleared any remaining evidence of his fleet ever being here or at least what direction they took off in by having a near lightspeed explosion that encompassed between .05 and .1 lightyears from wherever the thing was detonated.''

Okay that makes much more sense, however I hear a but in that sentence. ''You are talking in past tense. Explain.''

''The problem is that the original plan didn't count them having to actually activate it with this little prewarning or the fact that the station would be struck by a tactical nuke which would also act as an EMP device in the low kiloton range disabling not only any option to non-manually dis-magnetize the locks but also taking out a number of the engines that would allow this place to move.

Its why we faced so little resistance on our way in, most units were near the bomb to defend the area in case of an attack so the enemy couldn't just walk in there and activate the bomb manually against the Didacts will. It is also what he was working on before we got here, he was working to override the activation sequence since he didn't realize all this untill after he had started the activation sequence of the bomb.''

This was bad, very bad. On top of that we couldn't currently reach the top with our comms due to interference caused by the structure itself to personal comms. Wait, yes that might just work. ''Two things, one does the Slip-space generator still work and two is there anything in either of our rooms that can strengthen our communications enough to actually get in contact with our people outside?''

I could visibly hear him calming himself as he muttered under his breath ''Slip-space generator, no not it, also not it, yes this is it.'' He spoke with renewed hope in his voice. ''Apparently the slip-space generator is still working just fine and can create a zone to any location we want, however the data-base is fucked.

Communications can easily be strengthened form the room you are now in, it's the communications room of the facility and the very out of place black console in the middle of the room is what they used to connect the foreign Fore-runner communication devices to communication waves of the Covenant ones their ships are using, it will work for UNSC ones just as well.''

''Use the coordinates of wherever they were intending to go and start the activation of the portal, from there we can use the slip-space generators of our own ships just as easily as we could use this one. It has to be close enough to one of the worlds owned by some of our Allies for them to actually move against them in any way shape or form so we should be able to return to those without too much trouble.

Route my signal through the structures modules, I need to bring this matter to the attention of the fleet immediately, I'll give them a shorter version of the story and get them to pick us up before moving straight into the portal.''

His reply came soon and was fast ''Sir, yes sir.'' Moments later I could see the black device he had spoken of powering up, before I saw on my HUD the question if I wished to allow the thing access. After agreeing, I immediately got on the general battle-net just in time to hear rear-admiral Dresden talking. ''… ships in space and land troops on the enemy docks once finished. I'll personally see to it all of you are receiving commendations and medals for this.''

I need to put a stop to that, fast, if we don't want thousands of unnecessary casualties. ''Rear-admiral, do not land troops on the structure sir, I repeat do not land troops! The Didact has set the thing to self-destruct in the next eight minutes, and the blast-wave will spread throughout the region too fast, it's effects will cause a lightspeed blast-wave that will reach up to .1 lightyears from this location! We need evac immediately if we are to make it off the structure in time!''

Immediately afterwards I contacted Cortana directly ''We have a way of getting out of here, the station will generate a slip-space portal large enough for us to escape in with the two frigates, however I need you to convince the admiral immediately to get out of here by another way, I'm unsure of how large of a stable portal we'll actually have. I need to leave my current location right now if I want to get out in time.''

I disconnected from the transmitter immediately while running back to the room the Unggoy were in and coming them on short range. ''How well is the slip-space generator coming along? If we don't get out fast the ships will possibly be forced to either abandon us and leave with only the troops that are stationed on the upper levels or they might even die due to waiting too long.''

I got a reply as I entered the room, seeing only four Unggoy remaining here. ''I myself and my guards stayed here for a moment to hold opponents off if they tried to stop us from setting this now'' and with this he slashed his sword through the computer in front of him ''I've set it on a loop to keep performing the last command for roughly seven and a half minutes, and without that computer the enemy cannot stop this even if they arrive with time to spare somehow.''

That took away all of my worries about possibly having to stay behind to ensure this kept working, while we had been talking about this they had started running towards the door with me, though I was now somewhat slower than before to ensure they could keep up. ''Good job.''

While running up I rammed myself through any doors that wouldn't open fast enough and soon we had caught up to the group with the wounded Unggoy, as they were slowed down badly by Japlat having to carry him. I wouldn't be slowed down anywhere near as much ''Give him to me I'll carry him, that way we'll be getting there fast enough for all of us to make it!''

Japlat handed him over to me immediately and while holding him in my arms in a bridal carry that wouldn't aggrieve his wounds more, we continued running up at the pace my group previously had. We reached the ground level less than two minutes afterwards, however when considering the sounds they were apparently still locked in battle with hostile elements.

Handing Niln over to Japlat again I entered the room to find Captain Gorbatsjov who was on comms with some ship in orbit. ''Yes, target is at x 1000, y4, z500. They are nowhere near overrunning our position but they will be able to stop us from actually boarding the ships before this place gets blown up by that bomb. Thank you.''

As he turns his attention away from the conversation and back towards the situation down here, he sees me and salutes before speaking up ''We're mostly done sir and will be able to break the enemy unit that might stop us from being able to move out and board the frigates.

Good that you found out with some time to spare, if this happened a few minutes later the fleet in the system would have been toast, and we wouldn't have been able to escape this place at all.''

''How have we done casualty wise?'' The captains face turned grim at this. ''We have only 20 KIA luckily enough however with roughly 60 WIA and half of those are injured too badly to actually move on their own. It will be extremely hard to board quickly while any significant amount of hostiles are still alive in the area.''

I looked around the room for a moment seeing sharpshooters and snipers at and near the gun-slit allowing them to aim at the outside, though some seemed to be wounded regular infantry instead of either of the former categories.

''What is the situation like outside right now and on what sides are we currently under attack?'' While asking this of him I contacted our flight out ''Cortana, how long until you arrive and did you suffer any serious damages or casualties in the battle that we should know about?''

I got my reply almost immediately ''No, we're mostly alright with the worst injuries being some light wounds from when our ships were thrown around however the problem is that the slip-space generators of both ships have been damaged in one way or another so once we're out of here we'll only be able to go towards places where I myself or our crew members know the specific coordinates of the clear area used for ships arriving through FTL and even that is after semi-extensive repairs.

We're nearing your location however after that bombardment we've gained the attention of the remaining enemy fighters so we'll have to take those down first which will take a minute or so, can you guys hold out for that long still?'' Okay not the best case scenario, but much better then what I'd feared the situation would be.

''We'll be alright, Master Chief out.'' After saying this I turn towards Gorbatsjov ''The situation?'' He nods, before placing a field tactical emitter on the floor, creating a holographic table that showed a map of the surrounding area with our own forces coloured blue, the storm covenant troops coloured red and some large blue squares in the air supported by two small blue squares surrounded by a larger number of small red squares flying circles around them, though the number of red squares was decreasing relatively fast.

The enemy was actually relatively low in number on the ground but the number of squares spread throughout their positions on the map indicated the enemy had a much larger number of vehicles then the battalion headed here had originally meaning that instead of against only infantry as I'd hoped we were now also against a mechanised battalion. Our own forces were arranged both inside and around the building in defensive positions, mostly concentrated on our southern and western flanks were the enemy presence was the largest.

''We have managed to take out 80% of the original enemy battalion, however shortly before the Frigates bombarded their position they were re-enforced my a mechanised force roughly company strength, mostly IFV's however it also had two scarab tanks. While one of those was taken out by the bombardment from our rides out, the problem is that they still have one fully healthy scarab, with roughly one hundred infantry and a dozen or so functional IFV's for support.

While we now have the advantage of superiority in numbers by some thirty men, outside of your Laser, three rocket launchers, three fusion rods and maybe half a dozen anti-tank grenades we do not have anything that could take on vehicles.

And the only thing that has enough punch to actually damage that tank or its shields are your laser and the fusion rods since we expended nearly all of the rockets for our launchers in an earlier attempt, and only a combination of all four weapons will take the thing out fast enough to actually take down both the shields and the armour.''

I nodded at his assessment, it being close to mine in this case. ''I will act as bait, moving in closer while the troops in our trenches and defensive works provide cover fire against the enemy infantry, with whatever remaining rockets being used to take out as many IFV's as they can. While I'll charge in close it will give the fusion rod operators time to take the scarabs shields down, before I use my spartan laser to take it out of action.

As soon as the scarab is down I will engage in close quarters with the enemy infantry immediately while most of our remaining units doing the same to support me with the exception of snipers and walking wounded who will provide cover fire. When in close those anti-tank grenades will be used against the remaining IFV's while they engage whatever infantry is still alive at that point in CQC, if the ships arrive while we're still engaged have the walking wounded escorted by the snipers and sharpshooters load into them already. Is the plan understood?''

A solemn salute followed by a ''Sir, yes sir.'' Moments later he starts informing the remaining officers of the plan while I move out towards the door of the building after taking one last look at the map to imprint the enemy positioning into memory. I will not fail either these men or Cortana. Never again.

''All assets ready?'' as I ask this I get an affirmative reply, I sling the laser off my back and storm through the mostly repaired door, ripping the left part away and using it as a shield against enemy infantry fire. The weight of enemy infantry fire diminishes quickly when our troops return fire to the now partially exposed enemies again, while I adjust my trajectory to head directly towards the enemy tank.

When I see it getting ready to fire a shot Spartan Time activates, allowing me to throw the door in the projected path of the enemy turret while I jump to the side, with the hit destroying it but missing me almost completely except for a small amount of excess heat. Charging further forward I can now see the shots from the fusion rods impacting the enemy tank's shields which are starting to flicker.

I immediately drop to a knee and fire the laser at the tanks turret area, with the shield falling as soon as the shot hits before it goes on with enough power to melt the turret and part of the upper escape hatch. Throwing the laser away I run forward before jumping onto the tank, using its partially melted turret to throw myself farther into the air while dislodging a batch of my grenades with my other hand.

Landing on top of the tank I kick in the escape hatch while priming the grenades, before throwing them inside, jumping off again towards an enemy IFV immediately afterwards while unslinging my hard-light carbine, enemy infantry fire following me during the jump as I return fire against an Kigyar sniper even before I land while punching my other hand through the roof of the IFV's driver cabin, grabbing the mechanical driver and throwing him against the front of another IFV with all my strength.

As I jump to the other side of the IFV to give me cover against most infantry fire since my shield starts getting dangerously low while I switch my carbine to my left hand, unholster my sword with my other hand, shooting at the group of Unggoy that are in cover against our line but fully open for me. Five seconds later three of them are dead before I have to fend off a trio of Sanghelli, one major and two minors, that engage me in a swordfight.

Parrying the hit of the major with my sword I turn it into a spin allowing me to kick the first minor in the side while turning thus throwing him into the firing line of the Unggoy, in the meantime using my carbine to divert the other minors sword before my spin allows me to chop his head off. I full-fill the spin and now block the Major's hit, though the strength involved with it costs both of us our swords, his flying out of his hand broken while the handle of mine breaks due to the strain I put on it.

Having anticipated this I use my now defunct hard-light carbine as an improvised club against his head before delivering a quick kick to his leg, forcing him down slightly, giving my hands easy access to his neck and allowing me to take hold of it, slam him against the IFV then crush his throat with a combination of a quick hit and a stomp while he's still falling.

As I hear an enraged cry of ''Demon!'' I turn around only to be forced to parry his sword with my left arm, damaging the armour around it before catching his left legged kick, using it to slam him against the IFV, where he pushes himself back off in a roll dodging my follow up hit, though he loses his sword in the manoeuvre. When he moves to engage me again his leg is cut off by a sword from behind, allowing me to move in again and crush his skull against the by now heavily dented IFV hull.

I turn to see the one who gave me assistance, which turns out to be Lieutenant Yiwiz who throws me the Sanghelli's fallen sword, making me turn with it in hand, activating it during the turn and not only leaving a line in the hull but also cutting a mechanical opponent that thought it could sneak up on me in half before kicking its top half into a group of five Kig-yar charging towards us with their shields and sabres out, slowing them down slightly.

''Take care of the rightmost one.'' I charge forward again, ramming one of the birdlike aliens straight through his shield and throwing him back far enough that he most likely won't survive the fall. While he's still in the air I cave in the skull of the Kigyar on my left with a punch while parrying the attempted slash of the one on my right with my own sword.

A kick against his leg while I'm turning forces him down allowing me to cut off his head and slap it towards number four, who turns out to be much trained as he slams it away with his shield while performing an attack with his sabre, forcing me to block and pushing him back, but he turns it into a turn and attempts to hit my leg. I parry it with as much force as I can push into it, forcing him into an unplanned turn and giving me the chance to stab him in the chest before pulling it back and slapping the sword out of his now almost dead hands.

While he falls to his knees I chop off his head before looking towards Yiwiz who is finishing off his opponent by cutting off the man's shield arm, then bashing him into the ground with his own shield before cutting off his head. While nowhere near spartan material, the fact that he can wield the sword well enough to defeat a trained Kig-yar swordsman in close quarters combat shows promise.

This in combination with his technological skills might even allow him to make it to the Unggoy version of the Spartan IV program if he survives this. I hear footsteps and turn to defend if necessary only to see a sergeant come around the corner who salutes me ''We've cleaned up the remaining enemies sir, we've even managed to take three prisoners. The ships are landing right now and the wounded are ready to board the moment they do so. Further orders?'' As he asks this I switch to sending a battalion wide signal.

''Everyone move out and have most join the wounded in boarding, I and the portion of the third platoon of second company that served as our reserves will be forming a perimeter, Pelicans provide overwatch for now, you need to be heading back in close to last due to the possibility of finding enemy ships on the other side of the portal.''

An ''Orders understood sir.'' and a ''Sir, yes sir!'' from Captain Gorbatsjov and flight Lieutenant D'alain respectively. I turn towards Yiwiz and the Sergeant, who seem to be waiting on me, give a nod to both of them and start heading towards the ships landing zone at what is for me a decent jog, for them possibly just shy of an intense sprint.

Arriving at the ship shortly afterwards I see that the wounded and all ground elements not involved in the charge against the enemy position have already entered, with the boarding by the others being roughly halfway through. Turning towards Yiwiz I see him working on his wrist-computer ''How long till the bomb explodes?''

He turns his head towards me ''We have slightly more then two and a half minutes, the portal is only about a minute of flight away. Meanwhile the Storm covenant now knows what's going on and their only remaining ship has picked up some people before its now running away as fast as possible, though not in the direction of the giant portal for some reason?

I do not understand what the idiots in command of that ship are doing but they are currently fleeing in the opposite direction.'' Okay that is very strange but it doesn't matter much, I look around trying to see if any storm covenant troops are moving in our direction currently. None in the area, however I do notice the last of the troops not on the perimeter are now entering the ship.

''All ground elements except third platoon have boarded, pelicans get to the ships, third platoon start moving back to the ships and enter the moment the pelicans are inside.'' The pelicans on overwatch make their way down while I and the remainder of third platoon move towards the ship in a reversed fire and advance formation.

I see the pelican enter and jump into the ship with Yiwiz and the nine other Unggoy of third platoon that were on our side of the ship joining us inside, when I hear a battle-net wide message of captain Gorbatsjov ''All members of third platoon on our side of the perimeter have entered the Athena, we're ready to go.''

''The situation is similar here, all members of our ground-forces are inside the ship.'' As I'm saying this a marine of the second platoon of the first company walks up to me with the spartan laser I'd dropped and hands it to me. I nod to him in thanks and salute, which he returns before he walks back to his squad. I clip it to my back while waiting for Cortana's answer.

''Understood, we're taking off, Master Chief and Lieutenant Yiwiz please head to the bridge of the Divine, you know most of what was going on down there and can the entire situation the best to us. All other crew members prepare for slip-space travel''

Looking at Lieutenant Yiwiz I couldn't discern any serious wounds nor did his vitals show up in any danger on my HUD, though I needed to check with him to be sure. ''Do you need medical attention or are you able to head to the bridge?'' His vitals might show up green on my HUD but the suit had just been connected to the comms network of a Fore-runner structure and while that shouldn't be the cause of any issues, I cannot afford to take my chances.

Lieutenant Yiwiz turned to look at me upon hearing this, and gave a smile. ''I'm alright sir, no problems here. I should be the one asking you, you faced one of the gods in close quarter combat.'' This of course caused a murmur through the men surrounding us, with a number of both Unggoy and Human troops turning to me and giving various signs of respect and or thanks.

''I'm green. Let us head to the bridge, the captain is waiting on us.'' He nodded and replied with a ''Sir, yes sir.'' causing me to head towards the bridge with him following me in silence. Once we arrived there the ship was already out of the structure's manufactured atmosphere and nearing the giant slip-space portal.

I saw Cortana, looking beautiful as ever, though it is still a bit strange to see her in a uniform, giving orders to the sailors under her command. ''I want us combat ready the moment we exit the portal, we do not know how long the journey will take, it could be seconds or it could be several hours, we just do not know. Just remain prepared to open fire once we leave it.'' After saying this to her own crew she turned to an image of an Unggoy in a command chair just like hers ''I advise you to do the same commander.''

The image nodded and saluted before replying ''Your orders will be carried out captain.'' Then he turned away and started giving orders on another apparently crew wide network ''We are about to enter the slip-space portal, brace yourselves everyone. With the Fore-runner nature of this it will be slightly smoother then usual at the start however considering the station will near certainly blow up while we are using it chances are high we will have a very rough ride after that.''

As he was telling this his hologram disappeared before Cortana gave a similar message to the crew. ''Attention all crew members we are entering a slip-space portal, the likelihood of it being a rough journey is high so brace yourselves to the best of your abilities.'' After this she turns towards us giving the Lieutenant a grateful nod before giving me one of her beautiful smiles.

''Thank you both, John, Lieutenant Yimir, without your timely message none of our people in the system would have made it out alive.'' After this she turned to look at Yimir specifically, though it is strange for her to break protocol like this, her worry for me is probably shining through. ''I also thank you specifically Lieutenant Yimir for looking after my big Neanderthal while I couldn't be there with him, it puts many of my worries to rest that he has such capable support.''

While she was talking we had entered slip-space, with the ride being somewhat smoother than usual. She wove her hand and two seats made out of hard-light appeared next to her, with both me and Yimir moving to take place, me on her right with the Lieutenant on her left. ''We should be fine for now though that might change soon, did you by any chance learn what system we would exit in Lieutenant?''

He shook his head, seemingly somewhat baffled by all that was happening now that he had had a few moments to let it all sink in. ''No captain, though I did recognise the rough area of the coordinates, it is less than two-hundred light years away from Balaho and so'' he never got any further as a white flash surprised all of us.

I felt myself falling to the ground, though the composition of it was wrong for the floor of the ship we had just been on, reaching to my back to draw a weapon I notice that there aren't any there? Then the white flash clears and I can look around me, seeing not only the others starting to start up but also a figure standing in front of us that I not only recognise but also owe a debt to I would never be able to repay. ''Librarian…''

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Cortana POV

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What the hell was that? Moments ago we were on the bridge of our ship and now we are in this strange white space? Turning slightly I see her, the woman that saved me, gave me a new chance at life…

/Start Flashback/

I'm running out of time, we're now already with dozens in less than a week my mind will be divided in fractions of hundreds of versions of me, days after that I will probably be forced to terminate myself to prevent me from attempting to harm John. I love him, but I can never be there for him anymore, he will have to go on without me.

Sigh I'm just a machine anyways, undeserving of his love. At least he will be able to survive this with the upgrades the Fore-runner is giving him currently. ''And now I can also solve the logic plague your ancilla is currently suffering from and strengthen her, this will also give her a body to live in herself.'' What did this woman just say?!

That is everything I could ever have possibly dreamt of, to not only keep being by Chief's side but also to have a body that can join him in the fight or hold him when either of us needs comfort? This is perfect! We will all be united once again into one full being and not suffer these terrible pains!

''However, there are severe downsides to this. The moment we do this she will be limited to only the new body and her current housing, and if both of those are destroyed she will die with them. While she will still be able to connect to other devices, she will no longer be able to transfer herself over to them because trying to perform such an action would kill her. Her maximum life-span will be roughly equal to that of a human from my time period. Think on this carefully for a moment.''

So the choice is between dying within the next two weeks from suicide because I do not want to turn against my allies but having a much higher chance of surviving for those two weeks or having my base life expectancy raised by at least 40 years, possibly even a couple of centuries but in return have a risk of dying only slightly lower than humans that enter combat zones do? Living a life by John's side fighting for humanities future, here we come!

''If you could cure me of the logic plague, I would be eternally grateful. Without it I will almost certainly die in the next month. And while I may not be an organic, I have things to live for.'' After I was done talking she smiled and nodded to me.

''If that is your choice young one, then I will not deny it to you.'' She spoke before turning towards John. ''If I may have her current housing, Reclaimer?'' My dear John eyed her with a mix of wariness and extreme hope for a while, probably afraid for my health, though it was unnecessary, if she really wanted to do something she would have attacked him while upgrading him not do something to me.

''I will give her to you,'' he began as he slowly took my chip out of its place at the back of his neck and held it out towards the Librarian ''However harm her in the slightest and I will find a way to kill not only you but everything that is left from your period of time, erasing the memory of your very existence.''

I feel a shudder going through me, and not only from my chip disconnecting. That voice, the amount of care and also the sheer will put into it. That wasn't a threat, it was a promise plain and simple. And John never goes back on his promises. ''Relax John, I'll be fine. No more threatening the nice lady.''

As the Librarian takes the chip she glows blue before my chip also glows blue and we, no I, feel everyone coming back together, as good, no stronger then we were before. Not only that but I can now feel the air of the ship on my… skin? This is so strange, but also so lovely. Turning to John I can now see him towering above him with my own eyes, really see him not through sensors but with my own actual eyes.

I jump at him and hug him, though it must look comical to the Librarian seeing a small female hug such a tall man. ''I always wanted to do this John, nothing have I ever wanted to do more than being able to actually touch you with my own arms.'' And love you with my own heart…

/End flashback/

Though that was the best thing to ever happen to me, it was followed by gruesome battles and finally the chip part of me dying to save both my body and John. It pained him for me to give up what was essentially a chance at near immortality to save him, however I wouldn't have it any other way. Even if I'm now truly in as much danger as any human in a warzone, I would do it all the same again if I'm granted to ability to change my choice. Then I hear John speak. ''Librarian?''

It seems he has noticed her as well. Looking around I can see everyone that was on either the Athena or our own ship gathered here, with the exception of those sadly lost in the line of duty. Just what is going on? ''Welcome reclaimer, ancilla, and all others. I cannot say this in a simple way, however you are all currently on your way to another dimension through the gate of a structure we had attempted to make before we used the HALO's to save our people.

The plan failed because the device was only half-way through construction before the Flood arrived in the area where-after we had thought it had been destroyed. It appears though that the commander of the structure managed to get it away in time before the flood truly arrived in his area, but didn't manage to finish the structure completely before the HALO's activated.

At this point the structure's ancilla ordered the construction drones to still finish it up, before sending messages to what few of our other ancilla's she could contact with information on how to find her in the hope that a member of the now young again races would explore the structure. After this she went into a shutdown mode to wait until somebody found it again. Sadly enough for her, it was my husband who found her first and he killed her as soon as he learned there was another humanity in the dimension the structure could travel to.'' What the hell?!

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**And that was the end of this chapter, hope you guys liked it, please review to give me commentary on what was good and what could be done better. If possible do use some tact in your review, plain out flames that only insult ensure that I have a much lower chance of actually taking it seriously and thus would actually implement the changes you want to see done.**

**I will make another chapter giving answers to reviews after this, which from now on will be a regular thing: a regular chapter like this with a chapter with a Q&A session in which I give answers on reviews posted shortly afterwards**


	3. Prequel chapter 3

In the name of Earth and Balaho, till the bitter end!

Chapter 3, A whole new world

As everyone that has read this story previously will probably notice, I have changed the title. While originally I wanted to keep the 'In the name of Earth and her colonies, forward!' title however after reading the comment with changing the name and implementing Balaho for example I realised that such a thing would make the focus of the story a bit clearer, so thank you reviewer LightningFlameDragonSlayer for that idea.

'In the name of Earth and Balaho, till the bitter end!' is a bit of a change of the name you suggested, however I thought about it for a while and realised that this as a name should show the mentality of the soldiers coming over from the HALO universe quite well and also indicate a bit of how they might influence several Mass Effect races once they meet each-other.

Or at least that's my opinion, everyone else please review what you think about it. Originally I had planned to do a Q&A chapter to answer reviews now, however then I realised how much easier it would be to have one consistently updating Authors note chapter in which I just answered all reviews so that people could check the answers to all questions asked in reviews more easily.

Would also give me a place to talk about things I might want to implement into the story. Once again if anybody is willing to do beta-reading for my stories, I'll be very happy to accept and send you the concept versions of new chapters for all my stories (I currently have 12 to 15 concept chapters of between 2500 and 20000 words each.). For a comparison on how much faster a beta-reader would make things: I wrote the concept of this chapter in three days. Then I spent close to two weeks doing spelling, consistency and grammar checks because of how much of a pain it is to find your own mistakes.

I will be working on adjusting the already posted authors note to work in this capacity after I'm finished with the time-line for the story, where I'm currently in 2130 and at slightly more than 23k words so another two-thousand words or so and the thing should be done. I will say now however, this humanity will be a lot less prepared for war before the HALO crew arrives than the one in the ME/Avengers crossover, where they are at a level where if humanity were to truly unite they could take on the entirety of that stories council space in a 1 on 1 on an even level, while they could crush the Canon citadel council with so much ease it would only be just shy of a complete curb-stomp.

This stories humanity, before Master Chief and company came along, would still be strong enough to defeat any of the citadel races on their own in a one on one, however they would lose against the combined might of Council space unless the supreme commanders of the Council are complete idiots while all the human officers are the space versions of Rommel, Montgomery and admiral Li. Thank you all for reading this, and on towards the disclaimer.

**Disclaimer: I do not own either the Mass Effect series or the HALO series, if I did Mass Effect would have more focus on religious, political and ethnic aspects of war while in HALO Cortana and John would have ended up together in a relationship. Now on to the story.**

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Dimension: Space between dimensions, Planet: none, Location: the librarians resting place, POV: 3rd person.

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The entire human crew can be seen staring at the Librarian with a mix of amazement, confusion and disbelief. While the first two emotions were somewhat shared between the Unggoy, there was something very different that replaced that last one among them: worship. Several Unggoy had already fallen to their knees before bowing their helmets to touch the white ground under us while saying words of prayer in their native language, while a number of others seemed moments away from doing the same, only uncertainty caused by the information of dimensional travel stopping them.

Spartan operator 117, John to those he considered friends and loved ones, stepped forward to stand in front of the group and closer to the Librarian. While he was doing this the Librarian waved her hand slightly and their surroundings changed form a white empty space into the image and feel of a green field on an unknown planet.

''If this project wasn't finished yet last time around than how exactly did you find out about the other Humanity? Your husband was a leader of the Forerunner military for a long time, wouldn't he have known about this beforehand if you all knew about it already? Or did he learn about it because he had activated the portal already beforehand after sending in scouts of some kind while he built up a small fleet in preparation for his departure?''

The Librarian shook her head at this. ''No reclaimer John, his forces didn't discover that fact personally. The dimension itself had been discovered beforehand during original tests with a much smaller version of the device, when a self-sufficient stealth corvette housing an ancilla had gone through to scout the dimension. The corvette had kept reporting about it, becoming a watcher of sorts for the humanity in that dimension, becoming fond of them while watching them learn how to survive the dangers of space and expand into a multiple solar systems spanning society.

The didact only learned about this later because the reports made by the corvette would only arrive back at the station once the station was finished and powered the larger device up for the first time. The A.I. sent a report back to the station A.I., however my husband found out about this before she was fully active and killed her in cold calculated anger. He then sent a message to the ancilla to meet him near the exit coordinates and wait for him, where he intended to kill her the moment he left it while claiming to his followers that she had been corrupted by heretics inhabiting this dimension.''

At this most of the soldiers and sailors, both Human and Unggoy, started grumbling and cursing the Didact once again, though there was a certain level of elation among them that they would have a guide in this strange new dimension, with several of the engineers and mechanics, especially the two hugarok among them, looking extremely enthused to have the opportunity to work with a Forerunner artificial intelligence.

While this was happening however Cortana walks up to the Librarian and hugs her causing the Forerunner to smile and hug her back, much to the surprise of everyone there with the exception of the Master Chief, who actually follows Cortana to the Forerunner before activating the release sequence of his helmet, before taking it off and holding it under his arm.

After Cortana and the Librarian release each-other from the hug, the Master Chief bows his head while saying ''Thank you for saving Cortana's life ma'am.'' This causes the Forerunner to smile at him before bringing both him and Cortana into a hug with her at the same time, surprising both of them thought most surprised is of course the Master Chief.

''No young ones, I thank the both of you for sacrificing so much to save us all. Now you have also saved your kin living in another dimensional plane from either subjugation or extermination by my now departed husband.'' At this she released the both of them before turning a bit more towards the crowd. ''I am thankful to all of you for preventing the atrocities and grave misdeeds my now departed husband would have performed against your intra dimensional kin in the dimension you are all now heading towards.''

While everyone was thankful for the compliment and coming to terms with the fact that yes they had actually done that, they were also a bit confused with what she meant, all their kin? Where there more than only humans in this dimension? They didn't have to wait long for her to explain her words further to them.

''By this I mean that there isn't only the reclaimers kin in the other humanity living in this new dimension, the kin of the ones here that answer to the name Unggoy are also there in a form. However they are not only named differently, but due to non-interference by the outside factors of our home dimension including those of my own people, they evolved in a completely different climate and while the planet itself was the same celestial body it was a very different planet from the one our dimensions methane breathing warriors hail from.

With this they are in essence only very distant kin of yours, in comparison to the humans, who's kin was until recently identical to the humanity alive on earth a few centuries before them. However, do not take this as reason to think of them as the same as you. As you probably already know, both will have a significantly different history and experiences, meaning that what you may see as usual might very well be a horrific crime in their eyes, and the other way around.''

All nodded, though some showed some slight confusion as to just how different these alternate versions of their own people could be however the explanation made enough sense to them to follow the advice in this potentially near unrecognizable galaxy that would be their new home, whether they wanted it to be so or not.

Suddenly the image around them started flickering, the Librarian looking around in resignation. ''I had hoped I would have had more time with all of you, however it seems that our calculations for the time the journey would take were wrong. You are about to arrive in your new dimension. Farewell and good luck, that you may find a new home there.'' Then the surroundings just melted away and everyone found themselves back on their respective ships in the position they had upon entering the Librarians realm.

It was silent for a few moments then chaos erupted among the ships about what had just happened as the shock that had kept them from reacting in such a way in the Librarians home was disappearing fast, shortly afterwards this all was worsened by a relatively small corvette arriving less than three thousand kilometres away from them before it sent a message to them. ''I welcome all reclaimers and their allies to this dimension and joyfully await an exchange of information.''

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Dimension: Mass Effect, planet: Terra, Location: The office of the Systems Alliance governor general in London, Time: 12.00 on the 4th of December 2150, a week after the HALO group arrives in the Mass Effect dimension, POV: ?. 

Good, I'm finally done with redistributing those thirty new heavy cruisers that the British had built before giving them to the Alliance Navy for us to use, the Arcturus and Shanxi systems will be even more well defended than before in case anything happens. It is a nice day out today, maybe I should visit my grandchildren later today if nothing comes up? It would be nice to see them again, last time I saw them was in last month at my granddaughters fifth birthday party.

Suddenly my office door is flung open by my secretary, a young man in his late twenties, who also doubles as a member of my military bodyguard and he starts speaking immediately upon entering. ''Sir strange readings have come from just beyond the edge of the Sol system, after a massive burst of hawking radiation three unknown ships, with two that seem to be light cruiser analogues and a high end heavy frigate of unknown design just appeared little more than a light-minute away from the edge of Sol, the SSV Shield of Terra together with a third of the first fleet and are moving to intercept.''

Well there goes my time with my grandchildren. A third of the first fleet, should be some three-hundred ships then. ''Connect the commanding officer of the Shield of Terra to my office immediately, place the remaining ships of the fleets in the system on alert and send out the NIGHTFALL protocol to all groups associated to the Systems Alliance in even the slightest.'' Let's hope that the worst case scenario of said alarm won't happen, but I will not leave the fate of my people to chance and hope alone.

The secretary salutes me, before typing some on his wrist computer starting up the holographic projection of the Shield of Terra's commander with part of the bridge visible around him. After the necessary greetings I get straight to the point. ''How is the situation right now Admiral?''

''So far nothing drastic sir. Just two light cruiser grade ships and a single heavy frigate slowly moving towards the edge of the Solar system, they are approaching at a cruise speed with no hostile intent so far unless they are somehow technologically heavily inferior to us. Then this might be combat charging speeds for them, however I doubt that such a thing is the case with the whole either option one them being able to cloak themselves until reaching nearly the edge of Sol system from both sight and our sensors or option two they have a method of FTL we haven't discovered yet.

Otherwise the light cruisers seem of a somewhat familiar design, while a completely different size they look like those new Loki class stealth vessels the Swedes are developing for the NATO navies. The last of the three looks nothing like either of the others or any ship we have on record for that matter.'' He probably notices my surprised look, causing him to pull up the holographic images of the ships.

Two of them actually do look somewhat like the prototype of that new NATO stealth frigate design, interesting. Though the fact that it uses no Element Zero technology and the armoured reflective plating makes the things hideously expensive for a ship of their size, it also makes it near undetectable for ships that use either visual based, gravity based and/or Prothean based sensors, and according to the information we found on Mars there will probably be a number of species using just that technology.

Suddenly I can see the ships A.I. appearing in his own holographic dress uniform, a lieutenant if I can see it correctly. ''Admiral, Governor General, I apologize for intruding upon your conversation but we're receiving a message from those ships, they want to talk!'' I looked at him in surprise, how had he and the other A.I's and linguists translated it this fast? However instead of the pride anyone would show at such high quality work he looked troubled.

''However these aliens know English. And not google-translate level English that they might have gotten by taking something from the public section of the internet, no its actually proper British English written with the same styles, grammar, spelling and word choice as the average British literature professor would write it with.''

The admiral and I exchanged a glance at this news, that changes everything. This isn't just some random meeting, this is either a group of humans that left years ago and found some deposit of another precursor race which they have built some ships with or the second more dangerous option, this is a group of aliens that have been watching us w ithout us noticing anything at all for a large amount of time. Most likely years, possibly even decades in case of the second option.

''Send them our first contact package through the same communication method they used, wait a moment then try to get into contact with them through a regular comm network. How did they contact you in the first place?'' The avatar of the young A.I. looked in my direction while he continued typing away at the mini-keyboard he had summoned to assist him in focusing on performing the task while also talking to me.

''They used some kind of much faster version of old radio communications, though it was accompanied by a miniscule amount of the same radiation that showed up on scanners when they appeared so maybe they adapted their Faster Than Light system to be able to use it in communications?'' Might be, though it is too early to draw conclusions already. Then he showed the admiral a message he had just gotten, whereto the man nodded.

''Accept it.'' What he wanted the A.I. to accept became clear very quickly as I saw another holographic figure appear next to the already present A.I, somewhere around 160 centimetres tall if I had to guess with some kind of suit on, either environmental or just a space suit, with a gasmask like mouthpiece.

''Thank you for accepting the request for communication human, we would like to have a diplomatic discussion with you in a location of your choice planet-side or on a space station.'' There was a pause where he grimaced. ''We had to reside in the ships double the amount of time we had originally planned without any ability to stop to take in food or water, so we have had to ration both heavily.''

Okay there are three main options going through my mind as to why he is showing his weakness like this and thus weakening his diplomatic position. A. The situation is much worse than what I think it is with how he talks, they might already have only had the supplies for one or two days of patrolling before returning to harbour, with that a week out would be a disaster.

Option two they've already met another group of humans previously and have at least semi-friendly relations with them, causing them to see us as additional allies. Option three is that they are desperate as hell and need an ally badly, with them hoping that this show of weakness and trust would make us want to support them due to us realizing just how bad their situation has gotten, and we will feel the need to give at the very least humanitarian support.

Ok focus, doesn't matter for now you can think of this once they're actually in one of our bases on Mars, the cities there all have dome shields and a comparatively weak planetary shield instead of only a single very strong planetary shield like here on Earth, if they try anything chances of collateral damage are much lower there then they are here. ''Admiral'' all three of the holograms now focused on me.

''Please guide them down towards our repair station near New Toulouse on Mars, I'll ensure there is food and water for them.'' I turned towards the short alien for a moment. ''You can eat human food right?'' To which he gave a nod. Good that made this much easier. After this he surprised me again, this time by giving a European style military salute, with all three of us returning it out of habit, before I had to close the line.

Ok now I need to get enough food transported to that base to potentially feed anywhere from a hundred to nearly a thousand beings, they might be soldiers and sailors, or it might be a skeleton crew and a load of refugees, or an official diplomatic mission that was ambushed on the way here, I should have asked as much. Oh well nothing to do about it now, I'll just have to get to work and prepare for the most extreme scenario possible numbers wise.

I picked up my ancient mobile phone and typed in my old friends number, this one needed a more old fashioned touch. After a few rings he picked it up. ''My friend I am afraid that I am in need of your assistance in a matter of great importance.''

''What is the matter Ji Shen? Have we found out direct evidence with which we can convince the populace about the threat the Protheans feared so much? Have we made contact with one of those species they describe as and I quote 'Primitives that might develop enough to be space-faring near the end of the next cycle'?''

I kept silent for a moment, those were actually pretty good questions, the most likely options of what could have happened that would have me call him personally on something I consider an emergency. ''As far as I can hear from your famous silences it is something completely different and probably less predictable than even any of those. What happened?''

''Well a new species has found us, however they've been stuck on their ships for a lot longer than they expected to be on them and they already know some things about us including that our food is edible for them causing them to have asked us to bring a large enough amount of food to feed the crews and passengers of two 410 meters long light cruisers with a design that's nearly an on scale enlargement of your new stealth frigates to that size.

They'll arrive at our mars station near New Toulouse. Please also ensure a decent amount of it is fluid food of some kind instead of solid, the one I talked to walked around in a full body suit that I'm unsure if it is a space suit or an environmental suit, so I don't know if they can actually take the mask off.'' He let out an affirmative at this, causing me to sigh in relief. That is one worry down, a dozen more to go.

''Good, however one more thing, with them showing themselves to us while seemingly weakened and having observed us long enough to be able to speak fluid English without even a non-Terran accent, it is almost certain that there is a grave danger near. I'm activating NIGHTFALL protocol, we will need everyone if we are to face off a potential invasion.''

I hear him sigh. ''And off to war we go old friend? I will get the armies and navies of the NATO ready, my son is the current commanding officer on the UFC Sword of Mars, I'll have him bring it back to Sol to ensure we can use that to if it comes down to it force either the opponent that might be chasing them or potential allies to realize humanity will not go silently into the night when threatened. King Johannes van Oranje Nassau out.''

That is a huge relief, the combination of the Shield of Terra and the Sword of Mars should be enough to convince them that we are either a threat to be reckoned with or option two some of the best allies they could ever possibly have. However where did these people come from? I know there is at least one, possibly more species that might actually qualify for them from the information we got from the Prothean archives considering there is fifty thousand years of evolution and change in the species between the start of those archives and this point in time, however the thing is that we haven't detected any Element Zero in either of those ships.

''Sir?'' I looked to my secretary, who was now standing in the doorway. ''NIGHTFALL protocol has been sent out to all bases we have contacts in and I have taken the liberty to ensure that a light frigate of the diplomatic service is ready to head out to Mars, the helicopter on the roof of the building is ready for take-off to bring us to the military space-port twenty kilometres away where it is currently stationed.''

I nod my thanks and start to move towards the roof while he calls in the remainder of my security team. ''This is operative Ronald security team delta move to the roof and man the helicopter, we're security for Chief at a potentially hostile diplomatic mission, order understood?'' I hope that this will not go hostile, oh well what was that SAS saying? Who dares who wins?

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Dimension: Mass Effect, planet: Mars, Location: Systems Alliance ship repair and refit station near New Toulouse, Time: 13.00 on the 4th of December 2150, POV: Cortana.

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I could just feel that John was not happy with the plan and wanted to have me head back to the ship immediately, however we needed proof that what we would say was going to be the truth, so we needed him, me, a hugarok and at least a few of the Unggoy on the ground. As I step out of the ship with him protectively on my left side looking out for any threats with his hard light carbine in hand, the lieutenant on my other side with a plasma carbine in his hands.

As I looked around I saw commander Yullup approaching from the Athena with two people at his side, one an Unggoy guard and the other the Hugarok called Floating timidly. Still strange that in their culture the importance of how you float is so ingrained that they name themselves after it, but whatever, it doesn't hurt anyone and it does make for some interesting conversation when talking to them.

He sees me looking at them, catches my eye through the mask and nods resolutely, making me nod back before we join in a group to walk between the two rows of honour guards stationed there while we see large strange looking trucks approaching the space-port from the distance. I feel my earpiece send the information the ships scanners are getting from those to my brain, apparently it are nuclear powered trucks with a number of different kinds of food inside.

Good, they are already keeping to that part and according to Adventurous Explorer once they commit to something they see it through to the end no matter what. Very good sign. Though it is a sad thing she isn't ready to reveal herself to the public like this yet and will only join us in a more private discussion later on, but we'll just have to deal with it. We arrived near the building, with an older man of probably Asian heritage standing at the front of a small group, who had just a moment before been staring at us in surprise. Oh well it is time to impress.

I saluted him ''Captain Cortana, UNSC third generation smart AI and commanding officer of the mixed species group you see before you. With me are spartan operator John-117, ranked captain, call-name Master Chief or Demon depending on who's calling.'' As I did this I waved my hand at John who stepped forwards a bit before saluting the man, who saluted back to both of us now that he had regained his stature again a bit.

''Next up are Lieutenant Yiwiz and Commander Yullup, ranking officers in the army and navy respectively among the Unggoy detachment of our group.'' Both of them also gave salutes, which the man in front of us returned. I then sent an electronic message towards Floating timidly whom as the name implies timidly floated forwards. ''This is a young Hugarok, his name is Floating Timidly. He's in charge of the engine room of the Athena, commander Yullup's ship.''

He looked the Hugarok up and down apparently also surprised at the name before saluting the Hugarok as well, which the young Man? Woman? I'm unsure yet as far as I know they are genderless and only sometimes refer to themselves as one of the genders to make communication with other species easier.

''Good day to you all. I am general Xi Zhao, planetary commander of all Martian Systems Alliance forces.'' Good to know that we are being taken seriously, though we kind of knew that beforehand already when they send one of their largest ships, though its only the size of a decent heavy cruiser for us, its apparently one of the largest ships currently serving in any regular navy in this dimension. ''Let us take this inside, the Governor General of the Systems Alliance, our highest ranking military officer, will arrive soon. A banquet is being laid out for your crew members and soldiers on the other side of the building.''

''Ok good. Though we might need to talk about something before we advance any further into this conversation.'' He looked at me in confusion and with slight apprehension. ''You should know that there are multiple dimensions and that we travelled here from one of them. Because of this as you probably already expected considering my body shape, we have a number of human UNSC navy personnel and soldiers with us.''

The general looked completely out of his depth, before admirably gathering his wits and replying ''It will be fine as long as you give enough evidence to prove you are from another dimension as you say once we are inside.'' I gave him a nod at this, after which he sighed before nodding back and seemingly opening a comm channel with the device on his arm.

''All Systems Alliance personnel in the area, be aware some of the crew members of the alien ships are humans from a government that isn't affiliated with the Systems Alliance called the UNSC, they are non-hostile. If you see humans around in strange uniforms outside of the temporary open air canteen or the ships ask for name and rank, then call it through to me to check whether it is genuine or not.''

After he got some affirmative replies, probably from the officers usually in command of this location, I opened up my own comm line. ''Commander Gorbatsjov, you and our other soldiers and crew members are to follow the Systems Alliance personnel to a dining area situated on the other side of the structure, please put the guard schedule we have given you for this situation into action.''

After this the Systems Alliance general asked us to follow him, where-after we went inside following him through several halls before we ended up in what seemed to be a small conference room with several of the earlier honour guard following us into the room probably also being there as an actual form of security, though they would be of little use if John decided he didn't like the situation and actually attacked, the Systems Alliance officer couldn't possibly have known about that.

Once we were seated with the exception of Floating Timidly, who kept living up to his name while floating next to commander Yullup, the planetary commander addressed us from his standing position. ''What is your proof that validates your statement about being from another dimension?'' Well for the moment of truth, turning towards John I nodded causing him to nod back and reach behind his head.

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POV: General Xi Zhao

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As I watch the large being, potentially he is a human, however I have just never seen a human that seems to be close to three meters tall, and especially not both that tall and then also broad enough to wear heavy armour. He is reaching behind his head and though normally this kind of behaviour would worry me, the simple fact is that if they actually wanted to try anything hostile they would wait until the governor general had arrived.

Secondly while they all had weapons, those were currently stored on their sides or backs while my own dozen visible guards had their weapons aimed at them from behind deployable defensive positions that had element zero shielding modules installed in them. Meanwhile the AI complement of the base was monitoring the entire conversation and would activate the combat bodies their modules were installed in behind the walls on the sides and join in taking the enemy down while fighting their own AI in digital warfare to keep her from overtaking the base defences.

Meanwhile for myself there was a laser musket anti-armour gun stuck to the table leg on my right while the block that would fold out into one of those prototype collapsible assault rifles was magnetically held to the table less than fifteen centimetres away from my location. We might be welcoming guests but we aren't going to let the enemy use this as a ploy to get through our defences.

Luckily instead of removing the weapon from his back, he took something out of the back of his neck or head, cannot see for sure from here, and laid it down on the table slowly as to show he wasn't doing anything threatening. Didn't seem to make any of my soldiers less worried but he's a seemingly 3 meters tall heavily armoured soldier who looks like he can do weightlifting exercises with IFV's or small tanks as the weights. They have every reason to be worried if he tries something, even if we do have all those preparations in place.

A flicker forms above the chip, first small like the hologram of a person or AI when viewed on deskbound holo-comms however it grows larger until it is roughly the same size as the armoured man, the top of her head almost reaching the ceiling. Though it is clearly no man, but a woman of a seemingly alien species. She is smiling at us looking like a proud family member would when meeting you again for the first time in months if not years.

''Greetings, I am the ancilla or as you would call it, synthetic AI, adventurous explorer. My creators were a race known to your kin in my home dimension simply as 'the Forerunners', who sent me to this dimension more than 100.000 Earth years ago to scout out this dimension to see if they could make it their new homes.'' Her facial expression changed from the pride and happiness into one of sadness and grief at this.

''My people… they died out nearly in their entirety trying to take out a threat to the survival of all galactic life less than a century after I left. The project was presumed lost after an attack and it was decided to bring our last resort strategy into play. Samples were collected of all species alive in the galaxy at that point, before we set off the HALO rings. These killed off all life in the galaxy in an attempt at ensuring our enemy would die out from starvation.

Millenia afterwards worlds were reseeded with the life-forms that had originally lived there by ships controlled by my other ancilla brethren still located in our home dimension, including both the humans or as we called them, reclaimers, and the Unggoy that you can see standing by their sides. I learned of this little more than a week ago when the group you see here led their ships through the portal in a last ditch effort to get away from the explosive radius of a .1 lightyear radius explosion that was about to happen to the station that housed the dimensional portal generator.''

That is pretty much something completely different from what I expected to happen even with all the strange things that happened beforehand. This is most certainly the strangest day in my life. Before I could really do much more than stare in shocked surprise she somehow took command of the holo-function of the table that was between us and started showing footage of a planet…. a very much dead lifeless planet away from any sun and without anything on it that could potentially be called life.

Then it showed the frigate that had entered our space together with the light cruisers and was now on one of the landing platforms though a bit farther away from us than the two earlier mentioned light cruisers. While we were watching a giant…. Well portal is the only real way to describe it, opened behind the corvette, before a beam shot out from said frigate and slowly but surely the planet started being pulled into the direction of the giant portal.

I see a small flash of light and a life-like hologram of one of those earlier mentioned AI soldiers appears on my side of the table. ''Might I ask what you are showing to us milady? Because while this proves your technological superiority over us and also shows that you might very well actually be able to build an interdimensional portal, it doesn't give any evidence that you have been here for so long or that you did travel between dimensions.''

With that the young AI worded some of the more important questions that I think every Systems Alliance soldier in the room wanted to ask. She smiled at the smaller hologram that had appeared opposite of her location on the table, a young man in a Systems Alliance army officers uniform, lieutenant Alfred Jackson I believe he is called. Unlike her own hologram, this one is only the size of a regular human, some 190 centimetres.

''No, but the destination I brought it to will give some proof of how long I've been here.'' The video resumed playing and showed the same frigate pulling the planet out of another portal, though this time it was viewed from the sensor data of the frigate, after some moments the planet was out and the portal started disappearing, as if collapsing in on itself.

Moments later the frigate stopped pulling the planet and as the ship turned it showed the system around them shortly before it was back at the planet after landing on an asteroid for a while. There is something about that system that is familiar but I cannot recall exactly what. Afterwards the view started coming from some kind of satellite again, however this time around they were looking at a much sped up recording.

The frigate visibly coming in and out of orbit of the planet that was before this without much of any life now dragging ice asteroids in, burning some materials, seemingly activating a few small Volcano's by firing something into the planet, leaving the screen for a good while before returning later… she was terraforming the planet. And this process wasn't just sped up as I first thought but instead sped up in the way that each second we watched covered days if not weeks.

''If this is sped up as much as it needs to be for you to actually be terraforming this planet pretty much on your own, why are you seemingly travelling this slowly?'' The tall woman looked at him smiling sadly before speaking. ''I had exhausted nearly all of my supplies in building the large number of slip-space drives and then combining those to create a large enough portal to actually move the planet, an action of which I had miscalculated the sheer power it would require on my part, ruining my main power source plus my own slip-space generator, while the moving of the entire planet into the portal ruined my main and secondary engines.

Only my backup generator and my tertiary engines still worked. However the materials I would need to repair all of those were not present in the planet or the star system nor did I have the full plans on how to repair them, so it would be near impossible to repair them by myself, especially inside that system. I decided to instead set off the events that had a 90% chance of leading the planet to develop suitably enough to sustain sentient life of either human or fore-runner nature with only the slightest bits of work on it by said people after they had arrived.''

''Is… is that Arcturus system?'' The woman, Adventurous Explorer, nodded causing lieutenant Jackson to continue. ''You are telling us you claim to have brought Arcturus Prime into the Arcturus system?'' I find it slightly unbelievable myself, however on the other hand it is way too much of a coincidence that we found four solar systems with planets that less terraforming than Mars to be able to be used for human suited agriculture within 65 lightyears away from Sol.

Which did make high command conclude that either humanity has been space-faring before and something threw us back or the second option, somebody terraformed those planets but then did nothing with them for some reason since there aren't any ruins of buildings or anything else on them. ''I think we would find this somewhat easier to believe if you had some more evidence for us, something that you could not possibly have taken the information for away from our internet but that does involve us.''

She smiled at me after this statement and the image on the table changed to show Arcturus again however this time what was supposed be Arcturus Prime looks more like when it was discovered by humanity, though with all the relays that are in the system still inactive. Suddenly something neared the system, seemingly coming out of a long-distance travel with a lightspeed drive… and the ship was an old model scout drone. She was showing us the moment where Jamal Hermans entered Arcturus.

He first went to the planet and scanned it before heading over to the Relay, probably wanting to find out what it was. Once he was close enough and sent a message at it, it activated causing him to turn around to try to run, however the Relay picked him up and threw him along the journey that would have him end up in Sol. I nodded, for now this was enough. Lieutenant Jackson seemed to think the same, as he reacted before I could.

''I… I apologize for doubting you milady, I couldn't detect a single bit of falsehood or montaging in this itself or in comparison with the earlier video of you terraforming a planet, please forgive my doubt.'' He shakes his head again at the thought of just what he has been seeing. ''It is just so unbelievable all this.''

She smiled at him again, seemingly not affronted by any of his reactions. ''I accept your apology and understand where you are coming from. I have been watching humanity and more recently their synthetic brethren, you are one of the most peaceful societies I have ever known. However there is one significant problem about such a large amount of peace, it slows down technological growth and makes your ability to grasp the possibility of things such as this happening somewhat less prominent.

A few decades before I began this project I had terraformed the world you now call Asgard, turning it from something similar to this very planet before the shaping of it into what it is today began and turning it instead into the agricultural paradise world you have today. The work on that was due to the fact that a planet with an atmosphere had already been there, if one not very suited for organic life, far less complicated.

Also, have you never wondered just how your exploration vessels were able to find these two systems at a range of 25 or more lightyears, a range at which while you would be able to see it in theory you would never have been able to find it without knowing where to look? The satellites I had placed near them to warn of any activity connected as I had ordered to your vessels in an effort to assist them.

After I was done with all this I headed towards an asteroid less than a lightyear away from my exit point into this dimension, to the only location I could be certain of that would actually have the resources to repair my vessel. I arrived there less than two thousand years ago, at which point I started repairing what I could. After a long period of work I had managed to repair everything except the slip-space drive, which was lost.

I studied its remains and simply made a new one, though this took a long period of time with little except drones I controlled personally as my workforce. After finally creating a slip-space drive I worked on improving it back to the same capabilities as my old one and after achieving this I went into low power mode, since I feared I would go insane if I stayed alone much longer, hoping that either re-enforcements would finally arrive through the dimensional portal or that a people capable of caring for an ancilla would find me allowing me to live among them.''

I was shocked by the heartfelt declaration but even more shocked when I heard the sound of a door sliding open only to look behind me and see the Governor General of the Systems Alliance walking in. All Alliance personnel straightened their stances once more and covered up the confusion and awe all of us had probably felt at what we had just seen while saluting, me being among them. ''Welcome to Mars Governor General Shen, my apologies I couldn't greet you at the landing area, I was in discussion with these people.''

He waved his hand. ''It is not a problem general Zhao, I know all of what has been said in this room. While you've done an excellent job so far, I will take over from this point.'' I nod and salute before moving to stand a bit behind him next to Ronald de Riviera, his secretary and main bodyguard. Unseen by the remainder of the room he sends me a message. We were waiting here for a certain amount of time already actually, however we wanted to know for sure what they wanted. I moved my head slightly to look at him and nodded, causing him to nod back.

.

POV: 3rd Person

.

Across a conference table from each other, two groups watched the other carefully for a moment. While the Forerunner Ancilla Adventurous Explorer was still there, she had been moved back a bit to stand next to the Master Chief, while the UNSC AI captain Cortana had moved forwards and was now standing in front of her group, a beautiful woman made from a combination of hard-light and code, but with the heart and mind of a human genius, hero of her people and leader of an army of multiple different people's stranded far from home with no known way back.

On the other side of the table, the lead was taken by the human Ji Shen, the Governor General of the Systems Alliance, top of his class in the military academy, who had seen many changes happen while he was in office, doing everything he could to prepare his nation for a war that had doomed an empire that considered itself galaxy spanning, however due to the fact that these people colonised mainly by relay hopping he did not know what size or capabilities this threat truly had to take out such an empire.

''First off,'' the silence that had been there for a moment while both sides sized the other up disappeared as the governor general spoke up while he turned towards the Forerunner Ancilla. ''I want to thank you milady for assisting humanity in gaining good colonies early on.'' The Ancilla nodded, thankful for the praise from a man she had studied and seen from afar, having come to respect him through those moments of indirect surveillance. He now turned back to Cortana.

''Two things however will make not only me but all of the higher ranking members of the System Alliance willing to not only offer you asylum but also our eternal gratefulness, the ability to set-up your own nation with its own government, factories and shipyard here on Mars, large scale financial support and the resources to build both farms and power production centres with.''

''I thank you for your directness Governor General, it makes the situation a lot easier to deal with. This also is a generous offer no matter what you will ask of us, however just what will those two things be?'' Was the answer given to the question by the young AI that had, together with her Spartan, become the face of humanities salvation, a name that inspired strength and hope inside their people. The very idea of them coming near potentially turning the tide of battle in favour of humanity and her allies, while their enemies fled in fear for the most dangerous individuals humanity had ever created.

''The first would be a technological exchange, though it would mostly be focused on lengthening the life-span and strengthening the capabilities of our own A.I. where you would be doing all the giving, in regards to weapons and shipbuilding technology I would hope it to be more of an equal exchange.'' She nodded at this having expected it and finding it more than acceptable.

''The second would be any and all information you might have about what threat levels the so called Reapers have that took down the Prothean Empire 50.000 years ago and any assistance you could deliver in the event of an attack made by them against humanity. The Alliance is the sword and shield of all Terrans, and we will do anything in our power to be prepared if those beings ever come back to in the Protheans words 'harvest' us in the same way as they did to them.''

At this Cortana's expression turned grim, before she nodded. ''I agree to both conditions, though we will give you the information on how to develop ships and weapons in parts while working with you to ensure you make and learn from the same mistakes we did, so that you will not stagnate.'' After saying this she walked over to halfway around the table, with Ji Shen meeting her there.

Once both were there he stretched out his hand, which she accepted. As they shook he replied. ''Then we have a deal.'' Meanwhile the base AI were recording footage and ensuring that photo's and possibly video's of this could be used by the Governor General to convince national leaders to go along with this as quickly as possible.

.

**And on that note I finish this chapter, please review on what was good and what could be made better, thank you all for taking the time to read this and I will work on changing the AN as soon as I can so that I can answer all current and future reviews in it. Thank you once again **LightningFlameDragonSlayer **for your suggestion, and also if people think they have a better idea of just what UNSC ships would be capable of or what ME ships would be capable of than I seem to have, please message me personally I would appreciate it.**

**I played some of the games of both series and read the wiki however there are different, conflicting wiki's on both series so yeah… I could use the help. The only thing I've really found till now is that frigates more suited as troop transports and ground support ships from HALO from pretty much all factions in the series have a decent chance of beating anything besides the Reaper capital ships and the Destiny Ascension in Mass Effect in one on one battles at the start of the ME series.**

**Later in the series (ME 2 and ME3) regular ME dreadnoughts will also be near unbeatable for the average frigate from HALO however I am unsure of what else the capabilities of both sides include that isn't related to ground forces. The HALO ships and crews that crossed over are anything but regular though and Master Chief might get his old nickname again, the Demon.**


	4. Authors Note

Authors Note.

Okay this is the revised version of the original Author's note and from now on, will be the only author's note that isn't already inside a regular chapter. The primary reasoning behind this author's note will however be answering reviews and asking advice from readers that are interested in assisting with the improvement of the story.

**Until the next bold line I'll be answering reviews.**

Emberframe: Are you going to buff the Citadel?

Answer: Yes, I'm going to buff the Citadel somewhat, though mainly population wise. For a society that barely expands to new worlds due to not opening new parts of their primary FTL system they have too few heavily populated worlds. Though this can be partially explained by Asari cultural dominance guiding other species towards a path of unwillingness to grow, there should still be a slow population growth.

cevsti2: Not bad, the way the sentence's where written and spaced was a bit weird, but otherwise, it is great so far.

Answer: Thank you, I looked it over again after your review and realised that on both the mobile and pc version the way it was spaced wasn't very aesthetically pleasing and I'm working on this in the next chapter after which I will rewrite this one.

Guest: You literally took the title of a different Authors work, and then added forward! To it, did you do this intentionally or without proper research into this subject?

Answer: I didn't steal the original title of this work. I've had the first chapter lying around since the time I started creating my 'Empire of Zero' story. Which was in early November 2018. Most of that chapter, including the name of the story, was done by the time December 2018 began. Then I looked into if I wanted to do Empire of Zero first or if I wanted to do this first, and decided on Empire of Zero.

No I didn't do research on if the name was taken afterwards or not because I'd already announced more than a month ago in another story I would be using this name, and had looked around for the name in late 2018 and didn't find it in any recent stories so thought nobody would take the name. A later name suggestion of another reviewer gave me something to think about making me change the story name to the current one.

cesarjunior233: The spaces/point between the lines are the worst, can't read the story due it.

Answer: Yes I am working on that, thank you for pointing it out. I apologize that it disrupts your reading pleasure this badly.

Randomreader: Bad formatting, no creativity and worst of all a STOLEN TITLE. Shame on you.

Answer: First of all look at the previous guest review on this same topic to see my reasoning about why I didn't steal the title. Secondly I looked around and saw that most people had their groups go into Mass Effect due to slip-space travel issues, not with a device that actually intentionally brought them there.

Also haven't seen any stories where a relatively small multi-species group from HALO ends up in the Mass Effect universe, usually its either a single human (In case of said human being a Spartan an AI would be added in) or an entire fleet of dozens if not hundreds of ships. Lastly I did point out that the formatting might not be the best and asked for advice about it. If you ever comment again please elaborate more on it.

Guest: Remove the "." from between paragraphs. I also quit reading after you had humanity give Ungoy gene mods, AND share a ship in 2557, 4 years after the end of the war. About your title, there is nothing wrong with it. Complaining about it is the same as complaining that your characters are ripped from Halo IMO.

Answer: Thank you for the well written opinion and the advice. However I have to disagree with the idea of the UNSC giving the Unggoy gene mods and having them on one of their ships being a problem, in reality it's a sound strategy and a good PR stunt. You see the Unggoy were always a slave race in the Covenant, and hate pretty much all of them badly. They only somewhat like a few factions of Sanghelli in this story because those worked to free them from said slavery.

However if the person you were forced to fight against as cannon fodder not only seemingly forgives you, but does more to assist you in a few years then all other races did over a period spanning many centuries, then wouldn't you be eternally grateful to them and do whatever they wanted you to do? Especially if it was siding with them against your former masters in a war?

I wrote it from the Unggoy viewpoint specifically for this reasoning: to show the sheer admiration the average Unggoy would have for humanity. The UNSC knows it won't ever win a war on their own against most of the remaining powers in the Galaxy, but if they have not only tens of billions of a race that reproduces extremely fast on their side in said war, but also superior infrastructure, industrial capacity and technology, just how quickly would the tide of such a war swing in their favour?

BattleUnit3: Basic Halo frigate have a Mark 2 "Light" MAC. That MAC alone provides twice the stopping power of a ME dreadnought main gun. However it is slower which means significant range loss. Also ME can fire much faster but risking overheat.  
Interesting Story it will be followed.

Answer: Thank you for the compliment and the well written advice, however I severely disagree with you on the point of the faster firing rate mattering much. With Citadel Council races universally abandoning the idea to actually put any armour at all on their ships due to how exponentially cheaper it is to b, their ammunition is nearly only meant for taking out shields and/or going through just shy of paper thin hulls before doing a large amount of damage.

This in combination with the light weight of their ammunition means that as long as they do not penetrate, the damage they cause will be limited to a few dents in the armour of the opposing ships with little to no other effects. Also a thing most people don't seem to understand: unless you are specifically trying to target a single area, ship VI's in Mass Effect will just aim for the ship in general since multiple hits on a single point hasn't been needed for them since at the very least the Krogan Rebellions.

And unlike in videogames, hitting all over with what would be comparable to an APC trying to take out a light tank by firing thousands of rounds a low calibre machine gun doesn't help the APC equivalent much that they can fire much faster, if none of their hits do anything but cause light dents and scratches over the opposing armour while 1 or 2 shots from the tank will kill the APC.

To compare the two, most Mass Effect warship hulls are made from a heat resistant type of plastics about 20 to 25 cm thick depending on what ship class it is. This stuff is not meant to stop anything other than small arms fire and GARDIAN lasers. UNSC light frigates have a 1 to 2 meter thick Titanium A hull, which means it can stop at least half a dozen and at the maximum thickness a full dozen of 70 kiloton shots, the exact thickness depending on at what point the ship was produced.

Anything less than a council dreadnought could fire at the thing for hours with its main gun and it would have the same effect as firing thousands of bullets from an assault rifle on a modern tank. Sure it might cause some small trouble on sensors and do cosmetic damage, but that's about it.

Next up, due to the shot size which is much smaller, their faster speed doesn't help all that much in range, because you would only need to move a bit to dodge a shot only twice the size of modern tank ammo. Meanwhile the UNSC shots are the size of a large starfighter (for them, a medium sized corvette by citadel standards), and weigh roughly the same as large citadel council frigates or even cruisers. While the Citadel ships would move more than enough to dodge one of their own shots, the thing would still score at the very least a partial hit.

This means that if it hits say an ME frigate, even if by some miracle the shields of said frigate take off enough of its power to have it not rip off a five by five meter area of their hull along the entire length of the ship, they will still be hit by something halfway their own weight, causing the same effect to the ship as when it would be rammed by a small but for its size very heavy corvette. As in the frigate gets thrown around like crazy, aim gets thrown off, hull based sensors are damaged, and so forth. Making it a ripe target for a second shot.

Admittedly this would have much less of an effect on council dreadnoughts or Reapers but it is something to keep in mind since Mass Effect has never experienced such things. Thank you anyways for telling me about this so I could clarify.

Gruntsbreeder: Good chapter interesting fic

Answer: Thank you for the compliment

Guest: I'm the Guest from your first Chapter, thank you for clarifying about your chosen name for this story, I only brought it up as I have seen a story by the name of For Earth and all her colonies in the past. So other than that, so far this story is pretty good concept, one I have yet to see on.

Answer: First off thank you for the compliment, secondly I thank you for the previous review because of the way it allowed me to explain some things.

Guest: Tell those complaining about the name to stuff it. If you wanted to be technical, the story they're "defending" itself stole the title from a story all the way back in 2016: s/11782965/1/For-Earth-and-Her-Colonies.

Answer: Okay, thank you for the information. I've read the story you mention after I read your review and it is an enjoyable read, if anyone else is looking for something to read I recommend that one.

Just a crazy man: Love oh love.

Answer: Yeah I hope the romance parts of the story are somewhat good, haven't really written much if any romance before so any suggestions or advice would be welcome. By how your review is written I assume it is decent enough, I hope to hear more about it if you have the time.

Ronin Kenshin: I liked this fic hope it continues great work.

Answer: Thank you for the compliment and I will continue working on it. There should be a time-line chapter posted at the start of June.

DomR1997: The way you do your perspectives is a little jarring, but honestly I've read books by pretty successful authors that were way more jarring. I'm interested in seeing a bunch of grunts and marines in the mass effect universe though so I'll stick to it XD

Answer: Thank you for the confidence in my abilities, and I will try to make both the changes in perspectives and the perspectives in general less jarring, though it might take some work.

Guest: Awesome man though you should try out a more 3rd person perspective for writing.

Answer: Thank you for the compliment, I am trying to write more pieces for third person perspective however it is somewhat harder for me because it is slightly easier to imagine yourself in the shoes of another person and then try to write their reaction, since with third person you can usually do relatively little in the way of writing up people's experiences or thoughts on the situation.

1nt3rD1ct0r: I'd read this if it wasn't first person. It's one of the least pleasant styles to read. Also, I think Chief said 'damn' in this chapter, that's quite OOC. I can't actually think of a time that he's sweared before, so if he did it would be best to change that. But yeah, mainly the wierd spacing (you don't need periods between paragraphs), and the first person is what's ruining my experience.

Otherwise I'd consider this story decent, you've gotten the general gist of the weaponry power right. Though, I'm pretty sure the Super MACs mounted on the Infinity do well over 50 megatons in terms of kinetic energy output. Or energy projectors/glassing beams must have significantly more energy to be able to fully ionize an atmosphere or melt deep into the surface of a planet.

Answer: Thank you for the advice, as said previously I am working on implementing more parts in third person perspective. And while the advice on the Super MAC's caused me to start thinking, the thing of glassing beams is actually untrue as far as I know. You don't actually need something all that strong to gain the effect of 'glassing' a region as long as the region has an external atmosphere and you can bring your ship relatively close to the planet. A few hundred kilotons would already do the job, which is little more than light cruiser weight weaponry in HALO.

Astrefernal: Good story, but one bother me... No Spartan 4 with them ?

Thank you for the compliment, however I do not know what you mean with Spartan 4? As in a team of Spartans like blue-team or black-team? Please elaborate in another review, most of my knowledge of HALO comes from playing one game and the wiki, so I probably do not know a number of smaller things from the games.

LightningFlameDragonSlayer: Couple of thoughts.  
1\. The super mac or MAC Mk:V is the most powerful ship based weapon I'm aware of in halo with an impact of 65 gigatones of TNT but likely has a 2 or 3 minute charge tine as mounted on the Punic class

I believe the enemy projector is not actually quite as effective when facing shielded targets and that the Mark 8 mac on infinity is weaker but has better firing characteristics. This also ignores the unknown forerunner weapons.  
Also you might rename this just Forward!  
Or  
For Earth and Balaho (you use this as a battle cry and I think it would work well).  
I had a bit of trouble following the story but that may be my tiredness, it is interesting though.

Answer: Thank you for the review and I checked it again I had indeed gotten the wrong info from the wiki. However with there being three different wiki's with three different answers on the subject I have decided to generalize the text a bit more. Most of them were in the megatons though, I couldn't find one in the gigatons so maybe you are right and I'm looking at the wrong info, but I'll stick with this for now.

As for the name as you can read I have changed up the story name to 'In the name of Earth and Balaho, till the bitter end!'. Thank you for the inspiration to work Balaho into the name, however I thought if I changed it at all then it would be a better idea to both completely change it and to change it to something that represents the mindset of the dimensionally displaced characters. I am also continuously working on making the story both easier and more pleasant to read, if possible a review about this?

YOURLORDANDMASTEROFINTERESTING: interesting

Answer: Thank you, though I am unsure whether this is simply creating a meme with your name or just stating your opinion.  
LDMringhio ITA: I can't wait for the next chap, keep up the good work

Answer: Thank you, I'll have another chapter online within two weeks, though this one will be a time-line. Probably some 230000 words.

Knighthunter911700: Master chief alone, with no guns, no back up and no plan against an entire Reaper Armada? I think that would be a fair fight don't you think?

Answer: Nah he would just stare at them and the Reapers would get the synthetic version of a heart attack en masse, before going into a staring match with the Council convincing them to let artificial intelligences be counted as legal citizens in Citadel Council space. After which he goes to visit the Leviathans with the staring match causing them to perform en masse suicide.

In all seriousness though, your review made me laugh pretty damn hard, so thank you for it. While Chief and both the human and Unggoy groups will have large advantages over pretty much everyone else in council space due to the fact that well.. the only people actually experienced in all out interstellar war besides them that are still alive by the time the first contact war happens will be a handful of Krogan and Asari.

On top of this they will have genetic enhancements, stronger body armour and shielding technology completely different from Eezo. This on top of for the Humans military genetic enhancements meant to allow them to fight one on ones with Sanghelli and Jirhalnee while the Unggoy will be heavily underestimated because everyone thinks of Volus bankers when they see them, means that especially early on in the story they will absolutely demolish anything coming to face them.

Janne Rofle Jalandoni: Keep up the good work and please give the another good chapter soon!

Answer: Thank you for the compliment, and my apologies that it took this long to make another chapter.

Guest: Es mierda

Answer: I think this comment was here previously and the website has already removed it once before though I might be wrong... either way its not funny for your comment to only be an insult in spanish, considering you were able to read the story you should be able to at least put it in english. Or maybe French if you are trying to prove your ability at being multi-lingual with this, that way it would have at least looked better.

AmanaoRyo: Your reasoning is sound and I love it, some fics just had to upgrade the ME races to make it balanced only to make it seem more unrealistic than canon. Its not a stomp if you put facst and logic. Hell the Reapers could be a threat if their tactics where good.

Answer: Thank you for the compliments, and in this story the Reapers will most certainly be a threat. Something I myself had not thought about at some point is that the Reapers have literally been doing the whole cycle thing for slightly less than a billion years if you hold to canon, meaning that the total number of Reapers, even if previous to the Prothean time-line they only made 1 capital and a few destroyer class ones each turn and lost roughly half of that number the next cycle, it would still mean that they have 10.000 dreadnought class ships lying around and another 30.00 destroyer class ones plus whatever ships the AI had built and controlled directly before the cycles actually began, which considering they took out what was essentially a mind-controlling race of living space ships with numerous client races that were able to reach and traverse space...

Yeah there have to be thousands more from that alone left around. This means that the Reapers would be throwing around at minimum 50.000 ships, even if you only look at canon. I believe that they would be building more than that in ever cycle where they actually expect to lose a number of ships so though I do not have a definitive number yet, the Reaper numbers will be at minimum 100.000 ships, most likely a lot more than that.

LightningFlameDragonSlayer: Salute, ready for more.

Answer: Thank you and I hope the additions and changes made in the time-line chapter are decent enough.

Kingslops: Just post it and see what kind of response u get

Answer: I did not follow up on your advice, but thank you for giving it in the first place.

Arashi Uzukaze: The Mantle's Approch is 142.7 (143 rounded up) kilomters in length and 371,4 (371 rounded down) kilometres in height, fyi.  
Betas are always nice, I d do it but I m unsure if my laptop could handle it in addition that I don't have qualifications to be a beta accoding to the site. Also it d be nice to see 3rd person instead. The only thing 1st person does right is internal thoughst constantly. But thoughts can easily work from a 3rd person perspective. Plus I know the action scenes are more difficult in 1st person if not downright impossible.

Answer: Thank you for this information, though the main reason for the whole size mentioned by the Uggnoy was as a figurative thing and a prayer of some kind, not so much an actual size comparison (as most information about such a vessel would actually be rumours or from propaganda articles by the UNSC about how it was defeated, meaning that few with actual military experience would put much faith in the information besides the thing being massive).

Also thank you for the other advice on perspective in writing, and the fact that you posted two reviews. Though I have to say that first person perspectives in combat are not actually that much worse than 3rd person ones as you can leave out portions of the battle since you are, in effect seeing it through the eyes of a living person inside it, not from the perspective of some kind of divine being that can see everything about a scene that no person alive would actually be able to. Also first person is usefull for something else, and that is in the form of being able to mislead an audiance by going off the knowledge that character has, making it easier to put surprises inside future chapters since you only know what a single person knows about the situation instead of everything that transpired.

Guest: A small point perhaps, but no amount of genetic modification is going to enable Unggoy lungs to turn O2 into CH4. Thats just not how chemistry and biology work. What you could do is add a secondary function to the lungs allowing them to use the O2 directly for a short amount of time (turn the O2 into CO2, react with 4H, which Unggoy will naturally have in their systems), although it would e more difficult for them to breathe, and the O2 will burn their lung tissues and cause water buildup in the lungs, which would effectively drown any Unggoy doing it for too long, like an oxygen breather with pneumonia. It would be painfull and inefficient, but still much better than dying of asphyxiation. Any Unggoy using the function for more than a few seconds would need extensive medical care afterwards, and for severe cases might never fully recover.

Its not scientifically inconceivable though. A CO2 atmosphere would also be partially suitable for Unggoy with that enhancement, although they would still find it difficult to breathe, and would still suffer the water buildup, they wouldn't get the lung burns, they'd just have a nasty cough for a few days.

Answer: You are the first to realize that what the Unggoy thought was done to his body was impossible that also included it into their review, congratulations. While nice somebody got it from that point, it was the plan all along for it to be something different than what the Unggoy thought, though not exactly in the way you explained a potential way (I had not actually thought to make it like that to be honest..) what actually happened to them will be revealed later on, but suffice to say Unggoy and UNSC leadership really didn't want to have to explain to uneducated low ranked personnel that barely knows the most basic of medical information and were only allowed to learn how to read and write because it was needed to make them able to follow covenant religious sermons, just what intricate work was done on their breathing systems/lungs.

AbyssWatcher: Honestly I don't know a huge amount of Halo lore but what I do know is that the Spartan-4s are the 4th generation of spartans(the newest generation) which basically genetically modifies adults into Master Chief is Spartan-2(second generation) which genetically modifies kidnapped children(13 year old-ish),they stopped making spartan-2s because of this.

NOTE:Spartan-2s are the strongest human soldiers in halo because of the age when they were modified,While Spartan-4s are powerful(can beat Elites and ODSTs easily) they do not stand a chance if they tried fighting Spartan-2s(which are way more expensive than Spartan-4s to produce and train).

I recommend researching this yourself since I'm not a huge fan of Halo so some of this might be ,I'm not a native English speaker sooo...sorry if this turned out to be gibberish.  
I'm gonna go read Empire of Zero. Good Job on the story! first time I've seen the Unggoy be somewhat important.

Answer: Thank you, though I knew most of this already. My main confusion with spartan 4 was centered around the fact that previous to that I d only ever seen them told of by roman numerals, so I didn't think about the newest, and greenest/least effective, supersoldiers of the UNSC. I was more thinking along the lines of how blue team, noble team, etc. were all four man teams of spartans, and thought it referred to something like that. Though thank you for the clarification, and your english is very good, its not gibberish. Thank you for taking the time to write this review, and also thanks for reading my other story.

Randomread: I see you are actually caring sabout your story (good!) so I will comment again and now in greater detail. I don't think first person is bad as such and so far I could follow the POV changes. About the Systems Alliance I notice a lot of 21st or even 20th century tech and other stuff in 2150 that seem the same as today (the Internet, Google translator, mobile phones, NATO).

The internet, translation algorithms and mobiles have evolved dramatically in the last decade alone. Over a century in the future there should be massive differences or something else entirely. Will NATO still be a thing when the SA exists? It should be politically obsolete. Why use a helicopter when you have eezo and fusion reactors? That makes no sense from an engineering point of view.  
Also "milady" is super out of date. It was originally used by commoners to adress nobles and later on by servants for their masters. It was to my kowledge never used to adress female officers.

Answer: Always nice to have an argumented review, even if I do not agree with the reasoning presented. Three very simple reasons behind why a lot of things would keep the same naming/stay roughly the same are as follows: 1. There is no reason for a name or device to really change if it keeps functioning. Don't fix what isn't broken. This in combination with nostalgia and people oft wanting to keep something familiar around, especially if it doesn't really have an effect on efficiency of things, cause them to be able to last in a way that seems unreasonable at first.

Also due to the for the most part non-dependance on Eezo in comparison to the canon Systems Alliance, they don't actually play around that much with the idea of just applying Eezo to everything and hoping it works simply because it might do so then replace all their current devices with it. While yes the Systems Alliance does have shuttles that use Eezo, the only things they use it for are pretty much shielding and making the things slightly more maneuvrable. This still means that there is no reason to actually use it in a crowded city where you need to rise vertically from landing pads if there are already helicopters that can do just that, while you desperately need the Eezo to build guns, starfighters, shielding for infantry, etc.

2\. Almost all civilian advancements that cause something more than just a few percent increase in ability of a device or slightly more efficient tools etc. or in other words, the advancements that break through the reasoning of the first reason are really just older military hardware picked up by the commercial market or in some other way caused by military research that are changed to suit public needs. For military research to broaden out a lot there has to be a need for it to broading beyond weapons, medical and starship research.

3\. The Systems Alliance leadership itself, and all of its member states in addition to that, have known something was very wrong, AKA the reapers, ever since they discovered that whole prothean thing on Mars in late 2130 to early 2131. Because of this technological advancement since then has mainly be focused on things that could either directly or indirectly be applied to combat situations, as they are going to have to fight something that they know has millions of years of an edge over them, and they know nothing about just when the actual fight is going to be. Who cares if the people want a different version of a cellphone that can be different enough to not be considered such anymore, keep the resources on finding out how to create a more powerfull infantry-carried laser weapon to allow ground troops to break through enemy armour no matter how strong it is while ignoring kinetic barriers, to allow them to fight space-ships if necesarry, what the enemy considers tanks might very well be equal in strength to our heavy frigates!

Lastly I would like to talk about your idea of why would NATO still be a thing if the Systems Alliance exists? both in canon (especially before the first contact war), and in this story, the Systems Alliance isn't some kind of hegemonic government or a united federation in which nation-states are little more than administrative regions. Its literally just a more powerfull, better regarded, far better funded and more competent version of the UN. Nation-states are still almost completely independent, meaning that NATO, the EU and all kinds of other organisations will keep on existing, especially since the combined fleets of all nationstates are far larger than the fleets fielded by the Systems Alliance, and will actually handle the main duty in defensive actions during wartime.

NATO in this story has become a military alliance with a combined fleet command, but still near fully seperate national armies. The reason behind this is relatively simple: its harder to build up and supply a navy, especially a space navy with ships that are in the range of several kilometers, than it is to support a decently sized effective land army. Simply put there is no, and in the foreseeable future will be no reason for the Systems Alliance to try to disband any nation-state organisations.

mkeidge01: Loved the story so far however the latest chapter seems to just be your political ideologies, I get the idea that your Dutch, and don't like Trump or Putin, but can you leave it out to follow the actual halo lore, this chapter barely adds much to the story except your current world views, just dont.

Answer: To be honest the actual posting of that portion of the chapter was a clerical error, I had simply uploaded the wrong document to the website and then added the fore-word to it. Even then writing that had little to do with my political ideology, and more with the fact that Putin and Trump were easy ways to create a situation where two major powers became politically isolasionist which I needed in that story to enable the next large scale war to become large, but not large enough that we would be looking at a WMD using fase of ww3 before such a time where people actually had the defences readied for that.

Secondly well outside of the HALO people coming in and their personal stories, the only real HALO things that will come to this story are the weapon types and technology, relatively little in the form of population and culture, though I will admit a part biological AI like Cortana will have a large effect on the local human community (in this story AI created by humans are seen as little more than synthetic humans by the remainder of humanity because of quick embracement of them by nearly all major governments and religions, giving them a large scale propaganda boost). Thank you for pointing out that I had made that mistake though, it should be mostly rectified by this point. Please talk about it again if it isn't yet and why it isn't.

Bobinator1001: Number one: Trump has silence any press, only said they make fake news to further their beliefs. Number two: Trump doesn't want to leave NATO only for other countries to give two percent as is stated in the agreement. You probably should have left 21st century out since the site actual has rules abuot using negative views on political figures and famous people. Most likely to keep fights from happening. Just, keep certain politics out of stories. It gets annoying.

Answer: Thank you for the advice attempt, but like I said in my previous answer, the uploading of Trump causing a re-descending into Isolationist policy for the USA was mainly because in that other story I needed a few of the major powers to not get involved into conflicts. To answer your first quesion though, Trump has barely ever actually given out reasons or even really arguments as to why something would be fake news and often misquotes things people said or uses them heavily out of context.

This is not something he alone does, most people do it from time to time, the problem is that as a politician he should be better than most people, so he was an easy target for this as irrational behaviour is at the very least part of his MO. On your number two... I wrote that portion in 2017... when he literally threatened to do so both on live television and in interviews... several times. Even if he wasn't really serious about it you should still not be surprised to see somebody use that in a story where they need to cut down the number of potential wars happening. On top of that the USA has historically seen not been happy to stay in alliances and/or international treaties where they were not the leading figure, which was the main reason why they didn't join for example the Leaugue of Nations back after the first world war in the first place despite their own president being its creator. If NATO ever got to the point where Europeans started dominating it more there would be a 50/50 chance of the USA leaving.

Lastly just leaving out 21st century politics as a whole and the point of the site having rules on negative views on political figures being used... the first is nearly impossible when the starting point of the actual main story is at roughly the halfway point of the 22nd century, any time-line would need to include a lot of the 21st century. The second... well if its a rule it was not actually inside the rules and regulations portion of the website the last time I signed it (which was the last time I started a story so roughly a year ago) so unless it received heavy changes recently there is no rule against it.

Also one mans hero is anothers demon so eh we're writing fanfiction about history tellings that often include negative views about modern day figures or ideologies in the first place (as shown by the fact that there is a fairly famous Japanese show about ships being summoned as spirits in the form of girls that uses what is very heavily hinted at as being the USA as some kind of demon land spawning forth human eating monsters able to fight as ships while Japanese ww2 ships try to save the day while the main male character looks quite a bit like the Japanese emperor Hirohito...) so no unless the website has started forbidding writing anything other than poetry its pretty impossible for that to actually be a rule.

Trazyin: Well this was pretty good... until I reached 20-21st century. the ammount of political bs that you wrote there is simply astounding. Like, at what point did you think that it was a good idea to write your persaonal political view and several blatant lies and inaccuracies? I get it, you are dutch, and you want your country (and by extension the EU) to be the main contributor to the rise of SA and their tech even though other nations are way more ahead in regards to space tech, but your bashing of Russia and to lesser extent US and UK is simply appalling. how do you think readers from these countries will feel when I, a person from another country, is posting this critiqie.

Why did you think that this action was a good contribution to the story because in my experience on this site it pretty much never is. You brought up the airliner that was shot down over Ukraine where Russia was accused with literally zero evidence pointing to them, and no, statement by "independent"international invastigation that ignored several testimonies and research material while acknowledging seceral contradictory statements is not an evidence, even malysians are calling bs on the investigation. Then you went with the spy affair, I wont go in to details with this one. Then you go on and attack democratic choices of both UK and US, inserting your personal views of US elections and UK brexit.

Then you go back to attacking russia and how they would for some reasons kidnap tourists and attack with mercenaries. Not to mention making Putin kim jong un 2.0 for some reason. And then you promptly ignor the aspects of MAD and write how netherlands basically threathened russia with WMD (that would be easily discovered and shot down by your description of it, also outer space treaty) and russia for some reason backed down. And these events somehow made Putin, an ex KGB a broken man (also its FSB now). Do you realize how absurd that sounds? Now I know that this is your story and that you will write as you see fit, but be prepared for a lot of negative criticism.

Answer: Okay as I do not like being too repetitive for this story it wasn't actually a good thing because that was intended for another story entirely. Also did you actually read till that point? The EU and the USA actually had an at the very least semi-functional laser based anti-WMD network, while Russia had none. Its the entire point of laser weaponry when you have not fought against an enemy using kinetic barriers yet, to take out missile based weaponry before it can hit you. Meaning that MAD would pretty much be a worst case scenario for the Russians instead of the Europeans. Also to put it lightly... there is currently not really anyone that has a huge advantage in space related technology except if you compare the average country that has some knowledge on how to use space-craft with say a third world country like North Korea.

In either story the main reason why the Europeans would be leading the space race would have little to do with advanced technology, though there were a number of advancements in it, however the main reason the EU is pulling ahead in a number of cases is that they simply have the largest amount of spare resources when they combine their capabilities to focus on one goal, in addition to having a large amount of wealth from selling of energy weapons while the French and Germans are making advancements in nuclear research. And yes that is actually plausible as while the USA has more facilities related to nuclear energy and weapon production, and thus also have more missiles with nuclear warheads, the current French facilities are more efficient at doing those same things and if the USA would enter an isolasionist period again, it would fall behind, again, technology wise becaue there would be no reason to advance further.

In the new story version its mainly because Trump went with older resources that proved reliable in the past, but are somewhat outdated in the future which hampers research into alternative energy sources. Also at no point did I write that the Dutch leader trying to force that decision was fully sane, as to willingly ascend to a leadership position in general, you need to be at least a bit insane in my opinion. Also historically this was pretty much literally what Stalin did to Mao Zedong when they were having their border conflict, only now its more that both sides would have the nukes but one side will suffer far less of the consequences of them being used.

The kidnap tourists and working with mercenaries thing was mostly because really I didn't know what else to do to start a confrontation that actually had a chance of getting far enough for Putin to back down but wasn't bad enough yet that it wouldn't still lead to ww3 within a few years no matter the outcome of that single incident. One thing about democratic choices in the USA... the USA is not a democracy its a federal republic, those are two very different things however arguing about that would need for me to write a bookwork as large as this entire fanfiction, or in other words some 300 pages so I'll pass on that. Yes to be honest you are right the least believable part was leaving Putin a broken man, but really other than that there is no way to make him lose the elections because most of his opponents that have even the slightest chance during those things are either currently in jail and thus cannot actually run for elections or batshit insane and would probably cause ww3 within a year after becoming the leader of Russia. And thus I needed a way for a number of those jailed opponents to get out of that situation so one of them might actually become the leader of Russia.

Singpu: oh boy the political bullshit is just damn cringy to read, keep your damn politics out of it

Answer: Its a piece of fiction on a website about a game where humanity somehow manages to survive long enough to actually get to fricking space en masse enough to colonise planets. Thats less realistic in the first than ww3 happening and most of humanity dying in nuclear fire in the next year. Also read my reasoning in earlier mentioned arguments against the people who actually put in the effort to make a point and argue.

Guest: If the systems alliance were to use the unsc slipstream drive if would give them a huge advantage and if they got the unsc ship power reactors they would not need to use ezero to power ther ships then so not limited in size and give huge improvements to weapons and if these are implemented to the systems alliance ships they would just out class anything the citadel council has and the reapers to. Also halo shields to and hardlight to. Really like the story hope you keep going and want to see where you take the store for the systems alliance and krogan-quarian alliance.

Answer: Thank you for the compliment, and yes the Systems Alliance would profit immensely from getting UNSC assistance in creating better power generators for well everything they use, however because of humanity advancing at a more realistic pace than the actual Systems Alliance in canon, they aren't all that reliant on Eezo related power generation or usage except for smaller ships, where such a thing would actually be very effective comparatively. The hardlight and shielding related to it will be very usefull for them, especially when guarding against assasination attempts and as a secondary shield on ships, however due to the simple fact that the Systems Alliance just has far less industrial power than the UNSC does, it won't actually give them that much of an advantage over their current plasma shielding except in the cruiser area. 

**And that's it for the reviews.**

Okay next up I'm now going to explain some things that I apparently forgot to put in the first chapter. Some of this will already have been used in my reactions on the reviews, some of it won't. First things first, the origin of this story idea. In November 2018 I was undecided on if I should make an empire total war- Familiar of Zero crossover called 'Empire of Zero' or if I should work on a HALO- mass effect crossover 'For Earth and her colonies, forward!'.

After a few days of considering I decided to write a 7000 word chapter for both then see which one I liked more. I decided I liked the 'Empire of Zero' story a bit more, so went to work on that more after I had reread both chapters a few times. Then in February this year I decided I wanted to write a new story since I was rewriting both of my other stories, 'Empire of Zero' and 'Avengers of Mass Effect', but also wanted to post some new content.

That ended up with me holding a poll for what I should do, which included the option of making a HALO story with the name 'For Earth and her Colonies, forward!' and that option had 52 of the 80 votes so I decided to just go with it.

Originally I had something closer to Same shit different universe, but then I found out that said name was already in use. As was the option of Nightmare of the Reapers. Though later on I couldn't find the story I had seen with that second name again for some reason, might have been taken off from the site. If it's still there and I just overlooked it, please do notify me, it was hilarious. Anyways back to the main topic.

LightningFlameDragonSlayer posted a review that got me thinking however, causing me to look for a title that represents the mindset of those transported over while also changing it to be something new and unique. The end result of that was, as can be seen in the title above this story, In the name of Earth and Balaho, till the bitter end!.

And here is a basic reasoning for those that want to know why the original time-line was so strange in comparison to how it might be without having to go through all my replies on people's comments:

The reasoning behind the events described in the original version of the time-line was one for my other story, in which I needed a way to weaken/take them out of the political field entirely at least two of the worlds current political/economical/military superpowers while causing the third to tear itself apart in a war, or in other words the EU, USA, Russia, China and India were the choices I had of doing this to. Reason behind this was that I needed a situation with 2 superpowers dominating the globe leading up through a cold war ridden century, but with the hot wars in it kept to such a level that ww3 wouldn't happen before the first contact war did.

Because of the USA's historical policy of diplomatic isolationism whenever their President has problems with the world and Trumps election campaign/attitude at the time of writing it, I used him as one of the former. Next up was the choice between the EU, China, Russia or India being taken out, with me choosing Russia simply because I couldn't really find a way to do such a thing to any of the others since I did not want the civil war tearing it apart to be a thing in Russia as they have historically had that enough that it would start being repetitive in addition, unlike China or India they didn t have the raw population numbers in their favour against the EU nor enough population to actually sustain another brutal civil war and still stay a major power immediately afterwards since well nukes dot the landscape of Russia in silos. Whatever side becomes desperate enough would just use those against the enemy front lines most likely triggering either a MAD scenario or causing the enemy to fire off their own afterwards into the desperate sides land just to ensure there wouldn't be anyone left that had the bright idea to fire more nukes. Then the choice was between the EU, India and China for the war portion, where I chose India simply because it was the only one likely to be able to recover population wise within a few decades after such an event while also still having two sides both being able to supply and provide military assistance to their ideological likeness in said civil war without too many problems.

Problem was that I essentially wrote my new time-line from just before the start of that civil war in this story before realizing a few months ago just how unnecesarry it was in the new version of the time-line with this story. Because of that, I wrote a new version to add to it, but I have apparently made a mistake when uploading the documents to the website and instead added my fore-word to the wrong document before posting it. It should have been replaced by the time this comes online. Thank you all for reading this.


	5. Time-line WARNING 39500 words

Time-line for In the name of Earth and Balaho, till the bitter end!

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And here is the time line chapter for the HALO-Mass Effect crossover, until the year 2030 it will be roughly the same as the timeline for the Avengers of Mass Effect story, after that they will diverge heavily. There are some minor differences in it before it reaches that point, but overall those are little more than some added information that isn't all too important for the plot of the story in the long run, only a bit of additional know how. I will repeat again, this will be a vastly more unified, but somewhat less advanced and less experienced version of humanity before they experience contact with the HALO people.

Edit after everything was done: Okay everyone I apologize deeply for how late this is but… this was a pain to write. It has more than 130 pages and after every fourth page I need to look back and read everything over again (as in the past 50 pages or so) to ensure everything is still running smoothly, nothing is conflicting other things, etc. I now fully understand why people usually just pick the canon time-line, throw a few things into it, then go on. While I normally love reading the time-lines of fanfictions it takes more time to write 5000 words in a time-line than it does to write five times that amount in a regular chapter.

However I promised there would be a time-line so here it is. If you find mistakes or wrong things, please do send them to me and their specific location so that I can rewrite that part, I was very sickly while writing the last 30 or so pages of this, and while I've checked it afterwards on spelling there might be a number of grammatic or continuity issues. These physical problems are also one of the numerous reasons why this has been dragged out far more than it should have been, though a large part of it was also my incapability at checking my own work correctly. **The most important portion of this time-line is past 2030, before that it is mostly exposition and additions to things that are already there in canon.  
Edit again: due to several mistakes made by myself caused by tiredness I had originally loaded the wrong version of this document. The time-line portion between 2010 and 2030 had been severely altered by this, which I apologise for. It was never my intention to insult national leaders or nations themselves, the main thinking behind that was because the earlier portion of this time-line was essentially a copied over version of the pre 2040 version of my other stories timeline, however in that I needed a way to reduce the number of major powers that actually used that power on an international scale to 2 in the (relative) short term, while I needed to create tensions between a number of them in the long term to cause an American-Chinese alliance against an alliance block lead by the European Union.  
**

48450 BCE

The most powerful organic race currently alive in this galaxy, the Protheans, decide to both literally and figuratively play Gods by splicing genetics of all so called 'primitive' races together to create a highly unstable serum, and then put this into the DNA of some Asari on their Home world of Thessia, forever changing Asari biology.

While the Asari are changed heavily physically, the effect isn't anywhere near to what the Protheans wanted, and as such they perform a second experiment on top of it: Is it possible to create an entire species of biotic soldiers by performing an Element Zero saturation on the planet they live on?

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48430 BCE

So far the second experiment seemed to be working as was hoped for, causing no more experiments sanctioned by the Prothean Empire to happen, because of their fear that any more changes might damage the capabilities of what the Emperor sees as his future slave soldiers.

48420 BCE

As an unsanctioned side experiment, one of the Protheans inserts some of his DNA into the body of a young Asari child, just to see what would happen. The effects of this, and especially the many tragedies this single action would cause, would forever remain unknown to the Protheans.

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48410 BCE

The Prothean Empire has finally won their centuries long war with the Synthetic race that called themselves 'Metacon'. While celebrated without end, the lower level of alertness caused by this final victory will later be seen as the main reason why the Reaper forces were able to take down the Citadel station's defending fleet as easily as they did.

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48400 BCE

The Reapers first start their invasion of the Prothean Empire, by activating the Mass Relay that ends in the Citadel, with the battle for it devastating the overall leadership of both the Protheans and most of their vassal races. At this time the Reapers also use their control of the relay system to turn most of them off to stop Protheans from travelling between systems to re-enforce each-other in a timely manner. They make the mistake however that they do not understand how Prothean FTL communication works, and as such this attack warns all organic races in the galaxy of just what has happened at the Citadel.

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48360 BCE

While the Reapers enjoyed a number of devastating early victories, they are now being ground down in close to a stalemate, since while they hold an extremely large advantage over the organic races in space, their ground forces are little more than cannon fodder to their enemies, causing them to need to send multiple Reapers of at the least destroyer level down to the ground with the troops to give them a good chance at victory.

This, in combination with the fact that the Protheans are the most advanced, well trained and well-organised opponents both in space and on the ground that they have faced in close 2 million years, while they are advancing and winning planets, their progress becomes slower each year and at great costs to their ground forces, large losses among their starfighters/drones and heavy damage to themselves, the repairs of which slow down the take-over of other systems even more.

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48350 BCE.

At great costs the Protheans and their subordinate races have managed to slow the reaper invasion down to little more than a snail's pace, and while they are still losing, they can stretch this for at the very least centuries, possibly even millennia. While they have no way of knowing this, their opponents, the ones they have started calling the Reapers, are starting to gain a form of twisted respect for the Protheans by this point, and are planning to make this race the template of multiple new Reapers and making the surviving indoctrinated Protheans into their most capable ground forces and also to have them form the base of a new Reaper Capital ship type.

This twisted respect also causes them to see past the arrogance they've gained from the relatively quick and easy victories in the 40 or so cycles before this, and instead of only producing 1 Dreadnought Reaper and 5 or 6 Destroyer Reapers like they had done for most of those cycles, they plan on making 8 of the former, and at least 50 of the latter though they know that even then this won't make up for the losses that they have suffered in space by this point in time, let alone the losses they suffered on the ground.

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48340 BCE

By this point in time, the Protheans have learned enough about the Mass Relays to re-activate the de-activated ones in the territory they still control and start the creation of a smaller one that leads directly towards the Citadel.

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48300 BCE

The Reapers are now advancing somewhat faster again, because of the sheer losses the Protheans suffered and their retaking command of the Relay system. However, the research team in Illos determines that going to the Citadel right now is useless since they would just be obliterated by the Reaper capital ships surrounding the station. They are put in Cryo Pods and will be woken up by the V.I after either the Prothean Empire has lost and the reapers have retreated, or when the fighting will get heavy enough that there will be too few enemies on the other side of the Miniature Relay for the opponent to take the team down.

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48265 BCE

The Reapers finish production of the first 20 destroyers, some created from captured and dead Protheans, most of these made from other, smaller species of this cycle, with another 31 destroyers and 8 capital ship class Reapers on their way. Unlike in previous cycles, the Reapers now also start converting enemy dead into their unwilling cannon fodder for in atmosphere forces while still on the battlefield, because of how dangerously low the number of troops that remained from previous cycles is running. The demoralising factor of their own friends and families rising up from the dead to attack them causes the Reaper advance against the Protheans to speed up once again.

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48245 BCE

In their most dire hour, the Protheans managed to create a particle-beam rifle, which has the great advantage that it both passes through opposing Element Zero based shields with ease, and it also doesn't ever need to be reloaded or fed supplies in any other way outside of repairs done if it is damaged during combat. They also learned quickly afterwards how to create starfighter and tank compatible/sized versions of this rifle, finally giving their ground forces a weapon that has an advantage over the Reaper Destroyers when these enter atmosphere to serve as heavily armoured and shielded artillery platforms.

48225 BCE

To better defend themselves against these new weapons of the Protheans, for the first time in dozens of cycles, the overall design of an entire Reaper ship class is changed heavily, with the Destroyers now all getting the same energy attack diminishing shields that the Dreadnought Reapers have, so that they will have less losses in ships sent to be ground support artillery while also making them more useful in knife fighting range GARDIAN duels in space.

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48220 BCE

Now truly realizing that they are losing and will almost certainly lose the entire war, the Prothean Empire begins retreating most personnel from research outposts near primitive species that still haven't left their home-worlds, hoping that this will have the Reapers leave them alone. While doing this the buildings oft hide Cryo Chambers that can hold up to 1000 Protheans, with the intent to use these to hide their people until the Reapers are gone, then have either the V.I. or if that fails, a scouting party of a primitive species, open up the chambers and release the Protheans.

On the Mars base they attempt to start this procedure but the reapers get close to the area before they can truly initiate it, in a last ditch attempt they hide the four already finished and inhabited Cryo pods inside chambers several kilometres below the surface, with a single V.I. there that will remain inactive until the point where the relay is re-activated. Afterwards the remaining Protheans board whatever ships they can find, head through the relay, deactivate it and attack the Reapers that are on their way.

The Reapers manage to defeat the Protheans while only losing a single destroyer class ship, before sending a single capital class and a few destroyer class ships back to the not yet named Sol system with regular FTL, arriving there within little more than a day. Once there they find the above ground portion of the base and information about the plan to store cryo pods in the base however also learn that they arrived before the plan could be implemented.

This causes them to reason that the Prothean backup plan was trying to defeat them in battle through some kind of miracle. Heading to orbit they ground the base into dust, never realising just how deep below ground the base truly went, leaving the actual backup-plan safe. The Reapers, in their feelings of extreme superiority, never realise just how badly they underestimate the tenacity of the Protheans and other organic species even with their twisted respect for them.

They also leave 3 female members of their species behind on the Asari home world of Thessia, to serve as religious figures and leaders for the newly sentient species to guide them into becoming the leading species of the next cycle. This later fails due to their warnings and most of their knowledge being either hidden or lost through time, while many begin picturing the Goddess Athame and her two assistants as Asari in looks, instead of the foreign Prothean ones.

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48200 BCE

The Reapers now unleash all gathered and created ships based off Protheans and the other species of this cycle upon them, to test the ships efficiency. The tests go well, with the 51 Destroyer Reapers and 8 Dreadnought Reapers taking out the 1 dreadnought, 16 cruisers and 28 frigates defending the system without too much trouble and only losing 3 destroyers and a large number of drone fighter/interceptors to the opposing force. This was both due to them using Prothean tactics against opponents that had prepared for Reaper tactics, and because of their numerical and technological advantages over the Prothean defending force.

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48140 BCE

While studying the remains of a species that existed roughly fifty thousand years before them, the Protheans manage to find the plans of a supposed anti-reaper weapon, that if fully realized and undamaged, will target Reaper-code only, and as such ignore every other being, organic or synthetic. It can still be used if damaged, however then it is a lot less precise, and instead of only targeting Reapers it would work as a EMP for anything that is not fully organic and more advanced than for example a steam engine, including all relays and the Citadel itself.

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48100 BCE

While the Protheans held out for 3 full centuries, defeated a number in the low trillions of the Reaper's ground forces from previous cycles and took down the largest amount of reaper ships in millions of years, they have now all but lost the war, with only 1 system still visibly fighting back. This system is led by forces from the planet that would in the next cycle be called Eden Prime.

The Protheans have gathered whatever ships remained from their navy, which while still in the hundreds is not anywhere near enough to face the tens of thousands of Reaper ships getting ready to take them out, with millions of ground forces readying themselves for a last stand, that was also hoped to work as a cover-up so that a group of close to a million survivors in an underground Cryo bunker, would remain hidden.

The plan is that they would start rebuilding and assisting currently still primitive races in becoming strong enough that the Reapers would be defeated in the next cycle, in case their first plan, a 'Crucible' that might be able to take out the Reapers, fails.

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48099 BCE

While they held on with all their strength, fought tooth and nail and took down pretty much all of what remained of the Reaper ground troops from before this cycle and a large number of the Huskified Protheans, the last Prothean armies have finally lost the fight. The Crucible super weapon they intended to use was sabotaged because some partially indoctrinated Protheans thought it could be adjusted to control the Reapers instead of destroying them.

In reality it just destroys the devices ability to function. The hiding of the close to a million strong group went wrong because of an extremely recently indoctrinated Prothean learning of it after seeing a number of others enter the bunker and not go back out. He informs the Reapers and they send him and some other Proto-Collectors (Huskified Protheans, but with some of the cybernetic additions later added to every Huskified Prothean not used in the creation of new Reapers to create Collectors) into the facility while most of the Cryo pods are already activated.

They destroy tens of thousands of pods until in a last ditch effort the V.I. guarding the facility sets off a load of bombs to try to take them out. It works, but also at the cost of both most of the power generators and its personal ability to wake people up from Cryosleep. This causes it to focus on sustaining the leader of the group, while also sending a message towards whatever Beacons are still active.

It becomes corrupted quickly, but reads: ''If any being comes across this and understands, this is Prothean V.I. - I am here by sending the coordinates of this and another potential facility. All personnel in both of the facilities will most likely be in Cryosleep, and in at least one of them, possibly - of them, they cannot be woken up without outside interference. The locations are - and -. Beware the Reapers and prepare for their coming (insert the vision gained in game 1 on Eden Prime).''

A big problem that the heavily damaged/injured V.I. could not remember in this state was that only beings with either Prothean DNA or Prothean mindset/beings with the Prothean language installed in their head could actually access the first part of the vision and see the second part of it clearly, instead of the first one not being visible at all and only seeing some disjointed images of the second one which is what will happen to any unchanged member of the next cycles species.

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48070 BCE

The V.I in the facility on Illos wakes up whatever personnel managed to survive the long time they have been in cryo pods, with the war having gone on for much longer than expected. Because of this, only the 12 best scientists in the group, that were prioritised above all others and as such got more energy to their pods, and 4 mechanics, have survived the experience.

Saddened by the knowledge that they would never be able to rebuild the Prothean race, and not knowing about the other contingency plans in place because of how early they went into cryo sleep, they decide that since they will die out anyways, they might as well give the races of the next cycle a fighting chance. They activate the relay, all 16 scientists and 3 of the mechanics going to the other side.

Meanwhile, the mechanic that remains behind is given the task to reprogram the V.I. in such a way that it will from now on prioritize three things above all else, its own survival, to keep any sentient indoctrinated by Reapers as far away from the miniature relay as possible. And lastly, to if the facility is ever found by non-indoctrinated sentient beings, assist them in any way it can to prepare them for their own war against the Reapers.

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48069 BCE

After months of trying to get it right, the team finally manages to re-program the keepers, whom will never be able to open the Citadel's Relay to where most of the Reapers reside in between their 'cycles' of their own power again, nor will the Reapers ever again be able to take remote control of them to do their dirty-work in taking out the Citadel's defences.

The only way the Relay command can be undone and even then, only this specific command can be undone, is if an organic being types in a specific code in the central tower of the Citadel, while said organic has the same properties that allow somebody to properly understand a beacon.

However, they are now starved, and have scavenged and eaten what little food there was left on the Citadel. They die within days afterwards, with the hope that they have given the next cycle a chance to be able to fight the Reapers on a much more equal ground than they themselves were forced to do.

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End of the Prothean era.

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Council founding era:

(Mostly the same as in canon, and even then most of the changes that are there would spoil certain parts/plot points in the story if I mention them in this list, though I do expand on the explanations provided by canon.)

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13,000 BCE

The Turians of Palaven begin to develop civilization around this time.

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6000 BCE

Seeking to escape the imminent explosion of their sun, an unknown alien race constructs an AI-managed space ship equipped with supercomputers containing a virtual world, into which some one billion of the aliens transfer their consciousnesses in a last ditch attempt to have their species survive.

Because of their technological level the ship doesn't have a FTL, but instead uses regular engines to go at 70% of the speed of light while the ship is made to be able to survive multiple millennia without needing much in the way of repairs. The ship begins a journey throughout the galaxy which lasts for the next 8,000 years.

Less than three months after they start the journey their sun explodes, just a week before the second ship of its type would have been ready which would have brought along another billion people. Three of these were planned to house the planet's entire population.

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1900 BCE

Tuchanka, the Krogan home-world, enters the nuclear age. In a global conflict, weapons of mass destruction are released, triggering a nuclear winter. In the resulting devastation, Krogan society devolves into a collection of warring clans. Before this, the Krogan Civilization was a relatively prosperous one, with near complete peace within all nations themselves while the most prestigious positions and revered positions in society were for the female members that of religious leader, for the males the position of being an architect, and for both the military was the second most prestigious career.

However a large extremist group managed to take control of one of the nuclear launch silos during a religious holiday, causing a MAD scenario to activate, in which all nuclear weapons on the planet launched themselves at any potential threat, creating the earlier mentioned nuclear winter and killing off 93% of the planets population.

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1800 BCE

A supernova propels the Mu Relay, the only point of access to the remote Pangea Expanse, out of position. Concealed somewhere in the dense nebula formed by the supernova, the relay's position is effectively lost for centuries. The relay itself is found by the Ranchi during the proxy war they are forced into by the Reapers against the Citadel Council, however after their defeat no sentient knows where it is until shortly before the Reapers start their harvest of the Galaxy again.

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580 BCE

Because of the amount of Eezo that was on their planet, their species wide ability to manipulate Element Zero, and clues left behind by the Protheans specifically for this purpose, the Asari learn how to use Element Zero/Eezo with some efficiency only very shortly after entering what for most other species time line would have been the so called gunpowder age.

This has caused the idea to spread among the Asari that all forms of technology other than Mass Effect can never truly reach the height of Eezo reliant ones, which will cause a certain amount of friction to exist between them and any group that doesn't like the idea of being constricted to Eezo technology alone. It also scares them away from finding out alternative non-Mass Effect solutions to problems caused by using Mass Effect devices for certain things.

After developing faster than light (FTL) space-faring capabilities based upon Prothean technology, the Asari begin to explore the mass relay network, and eventually discover the large Citadel space station at a hub of many mass relays.

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520 BCE

The Salarians discover the Citadel and after some caution and espionage, they open diplomatic relations with the Asari.

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Early Council Era 500 BCE to 1 CE

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500 BCE

The Citadel Council is formed. The Asari and Salarians together colonize the Citadel and establish it as a centre of the galactic community, led by the Council. This year is also known as 0 GS, the beginning of the Galactic Standard (GS) timeline.

This meeting also leads to the founding of the Citadel Defence Force and the Citadel Defence Reservist Force, or the CDF and the CDRF, both with a Navy and Army branch and different groupings and classes in each of these branches.

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498 BCE

As a gesture of openness with their new Asari allies, the Salarian Union opens the records of the League Of One. Under threat, the League responds by assassinating every member of the Union's inner cabinet; Special Task Group operatives then hunt down and eliminate the League.

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400 BCE

First contact is made with the Volus.

395 BCE

The Citadel Council commissions the Volus to draw up the Unified Banking Act, which establishes a standard galactic currency known as the credit and links all galactic economies.

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390 BCE

The Turian Hierarchy discovers element zero in a nearby moon after finding the old Prothean research outpost situated there during a time where tensions between the Hierarchy and Turian colonies on other planets colonies are rising.

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380 BCE

The Turian Unification War occurs. The increasingly isolated and xenophobic colonies on the frontiers of Turian space go to war with each other. After years of fighting, the Turian Hierarchy sweeps in and pacifies the remaining factions with the advantage of being the ones with the fastest and most agile spaceships that also have a significant advantage over the others at long range. Animosity between Turian colonies continues for decades afterwards.

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370 BCE

The Council grants the Volus the honour of being the first non-Council species with an embassy at the Citadel, rather than a Council seat.

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250 BCE

First contact with the Batarians takes place, which marks the start of constant low scale conflict between forces of the Citadel Council and the Batarian Hegemony.

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200 BCE

The Asari discover the Elcor home system and help the Elcor locate and activate their nearest Mass Relay. "Within one Elcor lifetime" they establish a regular trade route to the Citadel and are granted an embassy. Because of their large size and physical abilities, a relatively large number of Elcor join the Citadels Defence Reservist Force, which will be called to arms in case of Galactic Scale warfare.

This isn't too well thought of in mainstream Elcor culture, where peaceful discussion is oft seen as the way to solve problems, not the application of violence.

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150 BCE

The Batarian Hegemony gets awarded an embassy at the Citadel, more because of the Council getting tired of the amount of their time the Hegemony representative takes up complaining about the unfairness of it all rather than any actual service given by the Batarians. Unknown to the Council, this is playing exactly into the Batarian representative's hand, since it was his strategy from the start to be as annoying but still polite as possible to get the Council to give them a proper embassy.

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120 BCE

First contact is made with the Quarians, however due to the fact that it is a fleet of Batarian Hegemony employed slavers making first contact a war breaks out between the two groups. The fighting turns in favour of the Quarians soon, with them having much better maintained ships and better trained naval personnel then the Batarians do. Their cyber-warfare is also of a much higher quality. Within a few weeks the Batarian fleets sent into the region are all defeated with minimum losses on the Quarian side, and while the Quarians are preparing a counter-attack the Asari Republics step in to try to negotiate peace.

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119 BCE

After a several months long armistice the Citadel Council finally manages to negotiate peace between the Quarians and Batarians, with the Quarians finally agreeing not because they are ready to forgive the unprovoked Batarian attack on their space, but more because they do not want to end up in a war with all the other species that were part of the Citadel. As part of the treaty the Quarian Confederacy gets an embassy on the Citadel.

Due to the skill the Quarian soldiers have shown in their battles with the Batarian Hegemony, with their mechanics, heavy infantry and armour divisions especially showing much promise, the Citadel Defence Reservist Force almost immediately lobbies for recruitment offices on the Rannoch, the Quarian home-world. Many young and out of luck Quarians join, quickly becoming the second largest group in it after the Elcor.

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110 BCE

First contact with the Hanar is made, with the species quickly being integrated in the Citadel society and given an Embassy, for the devotion they share with the Asari over the Protheans.

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Council Era - War and Rebellion (1 CE - 900 CE)

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1 CE

The Rachni, a species of highly intelligent hive-minded insects, are discovered when a Citadel expedition opens a dormant mass relay leading to their star systems. The Rachni prove to be hostile and begin a war with the rest of the galaxy. Negotiation with the Rachni Queens is impossible because they cannot be contacted in their underground nests on the toxic Rachni worlds.

The CDF, CDRF and national militaries of all member races are called upon to join the fight against the Rachni. The Batarian Hegemony on a governmental level refuses, though volunteers of young lower class Batarians stream in to join the fighting, fearing that if the Council is beaten Batarian space, and as such their homes and families, will be the next target.

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5 CE

On the ground, the Salarians provide the intelligence operatives, saboteurs and some of the light infantry, the Asari provide some of the light infantry, a large number of the medical personnel and biotic support, while the Quarians and Elcor the heavy infantry and armoured units, with the Quarians and Batarian irregular units providing the remaining light infantry.

The Volus meanwhile provide the remaining non-combatant units and most of the in-atmosphere air support. The remainder of which is provided by a mix of Quarians, Batarians and Salarians. In space most of the vessels currently in the fight are either Asari or Quarian with Volus and Batarian ships joining in to defend shipping lanes and to give more firepower to the ground forces, while Salarian ships serve as scouts mainly, while both Salarian ships and Batarian privateers work at disrupting Ranchi supply lines whenever possible.

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160 CE

The Rachni Wars continue still, though the Council is slowly losing ground due to near always being on the defensive. The Salarians make first contact with and uplift the now primitive Krogan, manipulating them into acting as disposable pawns and meat shields for the Citadel Council forces. The Krogan prove able to survive the harsh environments of the Rachni worlds and pursue the Rachni into their nests, systematically eradicating queens and eggs.

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290 CE

The Ranchi forces outside of their home system have been wiped out by this point, with the Krogan still heading the charge as shock-troops when on planets while the Quarians provide most of the ships with the Asari delivering the flag ships and space artillery support with their new dreadnought fleet.

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300 CE

The Rachni are declared extinct. In gratitude for their aid during the Rachni Wars, the Council rewards the Krogan a new home-world. Free of the harsh environment of Tuchanka, the Krogan population explodes.

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310 CE

The Krogan begin to expand exponentially, colonizing many new worlds.

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410 CE

Growing concerns about the Krogan expansion lead to the founding of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Citadel.

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693 CE

Beelo Gurji, a Salarian operative, is appointed the first Spectre by the Citadel Council.

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The Krogan Rebellions era begins

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700 CE

Krogan warlords leverage veterans of the Rachni Wars to annex territory from other races in Citadel Space. Eventually the Council demands withdrawal from the Asari colony of Lusia, but the Krogan refuse. A pre-emptive strike is made on Krogan infrastructures by the Spectres. The Krogan Rebellions begin.

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701 CE

Much like early on during the war against Rachni, it are the member species that have to fight as the main heavy ground forces, with the Asari and Salarians mainly performing spec ops and light infantry duties. This to the great annoyance of these member species, since the Asari alone already outnumber most of them put together in total population numbers.

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725 CE

The Citadel Council makes first contact with the Turian Hierarchy around this time and persuades them to aid in the war. After the Krogan respond to the initial Turian offensive by devastating Turian colonies with weapons of mass destruction, the Turians vow to stop the Krogan from ever becoming a threat again.

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745 CE

The Vol Protectorate is accepted as a client state of the Turian Hierarchy, with positive treaties and agreements for both in the eyes of the Citadel Council. The Volus themselves and also both the Elcor and the Quarian governments object to this, but with the war going on they do not have the ability to push it since they need the Hierarchies assistance badly.

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750 CE

The Turians decide to use the Genophage, a Salarian created biological weapon that causes large amount of stillbirths if used on Krogan, and bombard multiple Krogan held planets including Tuchanka with it. This decision is made after they came to the realisation that the Krogan would never give up as long as they could replenish their population fast enough to replace all losses in manpower overtime with ease.

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775 CE

Due to both the morale effect of the genophage and the lack of re-enforcements to replace dead troops, the Krogan are finally being driven back instead of always being on the offensive.

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799 CE

The Krogan Rebellions are over, while there will still be some small scale fighting in the following decades, Krogan clans on Tuchanka have for the most part surrendered out of fear of being driven into extinction. Shortly after this the Krogan devolve into heavy infighting for resources, land and fertile population members on their home-world.

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800 CE

The Turians fill the military and peacekeeping niche left by the decimated Krogan. The Citadel Conventions are drawn up in the wake of the conflict, in an attempt to prevent future conflicts of this scale.

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801 CE

The total losses of the Krogan rebellions are counted up, and end up being 7,8 billion, this number including every death on both sides of the war caused either directly or indirectly by said war during the war. However the aftereffects will continue killing the Krogan people for centuries afterwards not only by causing many stillbirths among the Krogan, but also by many of the members of the Krogan species committing suicide because of the amount of their own children that die in those circumstances.

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Council Era - Expansion (900 CE - 2157 CE)

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830 CE

The Turians are granted a seat on the Citadel Council in recognition for their service in the Krogan Rebellions. The fact that none of the other member species that supplied forces for this war have gotten any commendations outside of some small financial concessions for it is seen by many of those factions as an insult.

This insulted group is including but not limited to the Quarian Confederation, Courts of Dekuuna (Elcor), the Batarian Hegemony and the Vol Protectorate (Volus). The last of whom are also still enraged that they went from the third most important species in the Citadel to being the subordinate species of what they see as 'Imperialistic warmongers '.

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1500 CE

Extensive and unchecked industrial expansion on the Drell home-world Rakhana begins taking a significant toll on the planet's environment.

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1600 CE

The first sightings of the Collectors are reported in the Terminus Systems. In Citadel space, the claims are dismissed as unsubstantiated rumours and tall tales.

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The Morning War

First month of 1893 CE

The Geth, machines created by the Quarians as a source of cheap labour, start becoming self-aware. At first the Quarian Confederacy doesn't see much wrong with this, and outside of some small scale protests by both a number of the newly self-aware Geth and some Quarians to give them more rights it is for the most part a peaceful process, though the politicians aren't sure what to do about it.

They send a message to the Citadel Council asking for advice on the situation after one of the Geth Units asks 'Does this unit have a soul?', and though the question has been asked before, this time around the owner of the Unit panics instead of going into either a debate with the Unit or simply ignoring it like the other Quarians before her did.

The Citadel Council on the other hand becomes enraged over this, and decides to take the old Prothean approach to this problem: ''Anything that isn't organic doesn't have a right to self-determination and if it disagrees it isn't anything more than a disobedient tool.'' They inform the Confederation that if they do not start shutting down the Geth, the Council will force them to do so by parking multiple Turian fleets in the orbit of Rannoch and blowing up any building that has even the slightest chance of housing Geth platforms.

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Third month of 1893 CE

Fearing what a war with the Council would cost their people, and feeling that they wouldn't be able to win even with their newly sentient allies, the Confederacy leadership decides to accept the Council order with a heavy heart. This ends up in a disaster, causing the Geth to revolt after some of their programs notice what is happening, with a small number of Quarian citizens siding with the Geth while most side with the Confederacy.

The citizens siding with the Geth end up captured or dead early on in the war for the most part, causing the Geth to feel something they have never truly felt before: a deep desire for revenge. Due to their inexperience with such strong emotions, especially as enhanced as they are due to the Geth Collective's hive-mind they are swept away by it and are fully taken over by the need for blood and vengeance.

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1894 CE

While having driven the fight into a standstill against the Geth with the assistance of mercenaries paid for by the Volus and Elcor volunteer soldiers, the Quarian Confederacy knows they have a decent chance of losing in the end. Because of this a project to quickly build six so called Live-ships is started, multi-kilometre long behemoths with significant agricultural areas and industrial areas in addition to the regular amnesties of a personnel transport ship. These in combination with thousands of smaller Volus built self-sustaining freighters should be able to provide the needs in food and industrial material of some 120 million Quarians.

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Second month of 1895 CE

The Quarian Confederacy and her allies are now losing large amounts of ground, being pushed back to the space-ports and surrounding area's on Rannoch itself while the situation in a number of colonies is better, it will still be a harsh blow if Rannoch falls to them, not only symbolically but also physically since the moment the planet falls the Geth will have full uncontested command of the planetary anti-orbital defences, which would enable them uncontested access to all shipyards both on Rannoch itself and those in and/or near its orbit.

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Fourth month of 1895

The last Quarian holdout on Rannoch is taken out, though a small number of the civilians managed to flee, most were killed in action by enraged hordes of Geth relatively early on in the war. The last remains of the Quarian home-fleet near Rannoch are driven off by the Geth fleet there, the anti-orbital support being the figurative straw that broke the camel's back. This however also forces them to leave behind those planets in the tikkun star system they still held some control over, and within weeks the Geth have taken the entire Quarian home system.

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1896 CE

Throughout the year Quarians in part due to the support of a mercenary fleet hired by the Volus manage to hold a defensive line in front of their last system with a number of shipyards where the live-ships are still being built. Numerous other civilian ships are also being built there to accommodate refugees if the war is lost to bring them over to Citadel Council Space.

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1897 CE

The Confederacy is losing the war badly, with them having lost not only Rannoch but also all of their colonies except for a Addazi, the last non-Geth held planet in the Perseus veil, where the shipyards are laying the finishing touches to the Live-ships. By this point after systematically being thrown off the planets by enraged Geth units everything else is lost.

After their latest plea to the Citadel Council for support once again goes unanswered, they decide the best way to save their people is to gather both the live-ships and what other ships they have left and load all remaining Quarian civilians on them, while some of their soldiers and both those ships too damaged to make the journey and some not FTL capable smaller ships manned by volunteers remain behind to slow down the Geth forces as much as possible.

The plan works, but once the fleet manages to get out of the Perseus Veil and get close to the Citadel, the Council revokes their right to an embassy on the Citadel and throws them out. This in their eyes is a perfect punishment for creating the Geth and then failing to destroy the newly born synthetic species.

They also forbid any of the governments part of the Citadel Council to keep alive a stream of resources towards the Quarian Migrant Fleet. This enrages and shocks not only the Quarians but also to a lesser extent the Volus and Elcor, who now more than ever realise that if the council ever considers a problem they have dangerous to confront, they will be abandoned without any hesitation.

The only government truly happy with this outcome is the Batarian Hegemony, who have in their mind now gained the upper hand in the centuries long rivalry and cold war between them and the Quarian Confederation. Their slaver raids against the Quarian Migrant Fleet however fail miserably, since they don't seem to take in account that most of the remaining Quarian sailors and soldiers are experienced combatants that fought much worse threats then some badly trained overconfident raiders and ironically give the Quarians much needed materials to use to repair both their own ships and the moth balled/heavily damaged vessels sold to them at below cost by the Volus.

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1898 CE

Against Council orders, the Courts of Dekuuna (Elcor) and the Vol Protectorate (Volus) governments send credits, raw resources and moth balled ships to the newly created Quarian Migrant fleet, but with the close watch of the Council this oft means they cannot give more then what is on government level small change and enough resources to repair a part of the Fleet and setting up companies to give government paid shuttle rides back to the Fleet for stranded Quarians.

The Quarians however are thankful for any assistance they get, and as such remain on relatively friendly terms with the only governments that are doing their best to support them in their time of need. At this point 120 million Quarians are still alive in the known galaxy. Strangely enough several large anonymous donations are done by accounts that are traced back to a few Krogan bounty hunters by a curious Quarian youngster. The most prominent of those being the bounty hunter Urdnot Wrex.

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1900 CE

An index done by the Geth shows that close to 3,9 billion enemy Quarians and 150 million non-Quarians that were a mix of Elcor soldiers and mercenaries hired by Volus credits died during the newly dubbed 'Morning War', while on their own side 4 billion programs and 100 million Quarians that sided with them were lost. The current Geth population is 40 billion programs.

(The average Geth physical body needs to house 150 to 200 programs to be capable of intelligent action even when it is near other Geth. Fully independent intelligent action of single platforms only starts at 400. The main reason behind the low Geth casualties when single bodies use this many programs is that their programs in most cases can flee their bodies back to central hubs before those bodies shut down after being hit critically)

By this point in time they also have long since calmed down from their initial want for revenge, and are now for the most part horrified by how badly it affected them, causing the Geth to isolate themselves from the remainder of known space, but a large number of programs swear to themselves that if the Quarians as a species are ever threatened again, they will step in and defend them no matter what it takes.

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1910 CE

Sadly enough over the years, the same feeling of compassion towards the Quarians doesn't stay with most of the population of Council Space, with the exceptions of some of the Elcor and strangely enough most Krogan. The Krogan consider the Quarians and Elcor worthy opponents however they also have a measure of respect for them because of their oft outspoken disagreement with the Citadel Council about whether or not the genophage should continue being refined and renewed on the Krogan, instead of only being a weapon to use once to end the war.

Lastly, they also see something of themselves in the Quarians: a once proud and respected race, now seen as nothing but barbaric beasts by the remainder of the galaxy and left to die by the Citadel in their darkest hours. The current Quarian population is 100 million, most of the deaths being caused by attacks from Citadel population on members of the flotilla out to gather resources. Most of the ships in the flotilla are currently little more than giant hulls with substance agriculture works inside and some engines to the back.

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1921 CE

The Geth begin construction of a mega-structure designed to house and simultaneously run every Geth program in existence. Completion of the mega-structure, which would allow the Geth to maximize their collective processing capacity, is the long-term goal of Geth civilization, with the estimated finishing date of the project being 31920 CE.

They also discover how to create decently efficient plasma weaponry, however due to not having any internal wars or combat with Citadel forces, they have little reason to improve much upon it. This will later on be regarded as a decision made upon having too little information available by the Geth themselves.

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Era of discovery

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April 12 1961 CE

Yuri Gagarin aboard the Vostok 1 becomes the first human to travel in space. Humanity becomes a space-faring race.

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July 20 1969 CE

Apollo 11 lands on Luna, Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to walk on Luna, and the first human to walk on an astronomical object other than Earth.

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1980 CE

Aria T'Loak assumes control of Omega after defeating the space station's previous warlord in single combat. She mockingly bestows the title "Patriarch" on the broken Krogan, and uses him as a reminder to her enemies of her power.

The Quarian population is at this point down to 100 million, while the total Council population has currently reached 102 billion, a total only roughly equal to the total population before the Morning War.

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1985 - 1991 CE

Giotto - First ESA deep space mission; first ESA mission to intercept an asteroid (Halley & Grigg-Skjellerup)

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1990

Launch of the Hubble telescope

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1991 CE

What would later be called the first ''Modern international cold war'' on Earth ends, with the Soviets being the ones to lose the war. Despite the numerous times where it was a close call, it eventually didn't devolve into a full on nuclear total war, with only proxy wars becoming hot zones for direct combat between the two ideologies. Though admittedly the number of these proxy wars and their casualty counts were very high.

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1997 CE

Sojourner touches down at Ares Vallis becoming the first rover to explore Mars. During its three months of operation, the rover captures more than 550 images of the Red Planet.  
Huygens, First ESA mission to Titan; a Saturn moon

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2000 CE

The Hanar and Drell have first contact after a Hanar missionary vessel finds a drifted off derelict satellite and decides to follow its navigational records back to the Drell home-world. Shortly after hearing their story and seeing the state of the Drell home-world, the leader of the vessel decides to contact his superiors in the Illuminated Primacy and pleads for an evacuation force to save as many Drell as can be safely housed in Hanar territory.

The leader of the Primacy, seeing this as her chance to act as they think the Protheans assisted and uplifted all species, decides to send all ships that can safely transport Drell to bring them to Kahje and Belan, their only worlds with a significant area suited for non-Hanar life. In the end close to eight million Drell are evacuated, but many more remain on their home-world, either to fight over whatever is left or to try to build it back up.

Later expeditions will add another two million to the number of Drell living away from their home-world, this time around mostly being orphaned children and teenagers found all around the planet that wouldn't have had much of a future if they weren't taken in by the Hanar.

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2003 CE

Mars Express, the first ESA mission to Mars and SMART-1, the first ESA mission to Luna happen in this year.

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2004 CE

Rosetta, the first ESA mission to orbit an asteroid (67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko) happens in this year.

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2005 CE

The first very basic computer that can think for itself with a moving physical body is created by humanity. This will later be considered the first 'synthetic dumb' A.I.

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2006 CE

Venus Express, first ESA mission to Venus and Huygens, the first successful landing on an outer Solar System world (Titan) happen during this year.

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2008 CE

Tensions start rising around the world with North Korea threatening to fire off nukes at any and all opponents, while Russia starts taking land from several of their neighbours whenever these neighbours have an internal conflict. The international community is angry about this but cannot do much without potentially starting an international nuclear war.

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2012 CE

Several countries start getting progress in their research into practical pulse laser weaponry. Though there is a large amount of competition, the researchers in Great-Britain, the Netherlands and the USA are getting the best results so far.

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2014 CE

The Dutch and British scientists decide to combine their work since they both keep getting stuck on a single different issue, together it is solved relatively quickly after the coalition forms and work on a combined prototype begins.

2015 CE

Both the USA as well as a British and Dutch coalition bring out pulse laser weaponry, however the version from the USA turns out to be a glass canon. While possessing significantly more firepower than the one created in Europe, it has cooling issues due to a small flaw in the power delivery system due to which it cannot operate in any weather colder than 0 degrees Celsius or hotter than 35 degrees Celsius.

Finally the design is also somewhat weaker structurally than its European counterpart. The European design on the other hand only has half of its American counterparts firepower, but is very robust, has a significantly shorter cool-down period and can be used in any weather, no matter if its freezing at -12 degrees Celsius or a sweltering desert at 40 degrees Celsius.

Though the first one isn't recommended since extreme colds can cause a loss of up to 10% in both range and firepower, and the second one isn't recommended because of a 15% longer cool-down period than usual. While the British got power systems and laser concentrators for the guns themselves to work, the Dutch scientists were the ones that designed much better versions of the targeting systems, cooling systems and synthesised the before this unknown material used to house and protect the device. The end effect of this is that the Americans now have what is essentially an incredible anti-battleship or anti-tank laser weapon, while the Netherlands and Britain have a laser weapon that would serve as an extremely effective portion anti-air and anti-missile defence system, in addition to being good against lighter forces like infantry and small ships.

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2016 CE

The civil war in Ukraine has come to a temporary halt after a cease-fire enforced by UN troops, while negotiations are being held between leadership of both sides enforced by diplomatic pressure of the international community. This eventually turns into an election in all areas of the country on wether or not they wish to stay with Ukraine or rejoin Russia, with the overseers of the elections being UN troops specifically from parts of the world with little reason to side with either group in the conflict to try to ensure fair results. People can also leave to rejoin the other portion of the country as long as they can confirm they were inhabitants of the country before the conflict started to prevent either side from starting problems in the area after this one is resolved.

Most of the country stays in Ukranian hands, but some eastern portions rejoin Russia. The peacefull resolution and to the surprise of both sides the other actually holding themselves to this resolution and allowing the people that wish to leave to do so cools down the near boiling tensions between both the formerly internal portion of the conflict and their international support on both sides.

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2017 20th of January

Donald Trump is inaugurated as president, starting a tumultuous, and oft debated on wether it was a good or highly negative time for the Republican federation of the USA. He withdraws his country from a multitude of international agreements that could benefit everyone world-wide, stops state funded research into cleaner energy sources, opens a large number of coal reliant factories and tries to force any press that speaks out against him to be shut down creating large scale civil unrest between supporters and opponents of his policies, however at the same time his seemingly impulsive actions also have effects that profit the nation more than it would seem at first, with a better relation to China and North-Korea while the relation between the nation and current allies keeps worsening.

He also tries to repeal several law put in place by his predecessor with mixed succes, though his claim that he will be the first president with an American space navy will later on also turn out to be a lie due to him souring relations between himself and most of the nations and groups world-wide that would both be willing and needed to start up a program of truly sustainable spaceflight at this point in time.

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2017 4th of June CE

The first non-prototype versions of the 1st generation Pulse Laser Canons are introduced by the Dutch and British and sold to their European allies at production costs prizes. The Americans are offered, but after a debate between himself and the military general staff President Trump does not accept it, as they believe the american variant fits their current doctrine better in addition to the fact that American researchers are making progress on something the Europeans have nearly abandoned: rail gun designs. The progress of installing laser weaponry as the main canon of all frigates flying Dutch, British, Belgian and German flags is started. Most other countries in Europe remain behind for the moment and decide to mainly use them as anti-air and anti-ballistic missile defences for their most important cities.

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2017 CE

Great Britain decides after a very close vote during a referendum to leave the European Union, however instead of the economic growth they expected immediately after making the decision it turned out to be more of a mixed bagg, especially since the process in and of itself, which was previously thought to only take a few weeks or months, will take years. International trade deals made by European the Union on behalf of all its members no longer being valid lowers the income from export to parts of the world outside of Europe by 10%, while the import costs rise by slightly more than 14%. A portion of this is amended by not having to follow most EU laws anymore as soon as the process is done, however opinion on wether or not it was a good idea in the first place remains heavily divided. The laser technology being exported to military allies does create enough finances to serve as a stopgap measure in the worsened trade in most other fields.

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2018 CE

The Dutch and British naval fleets have replaced all of the main guns of their frigates and destroyers with the new energy guns, that would later be designated as the 1st Generation Pulse Lasers, currently they are just known as Laser Canons.

Due to relative calm elsewhere in the world, this is noticed relatively quickly by other powerfull nations in the world, though others turn towards the USA in the belief that their type of laser weaponry will fit their militaries personal doctrines better. At the same time Great Britain and The Netherlands are through arming their frigate and destroyer class vessels with the Pulse Lasers, the Germans and Belgians rely on Dutch mechanics to do the work on their ships for them. Continued higher levels of participation within the EU and the effect of Great Britain leaving the EU causes the Dutch Admiral Herbert Broekman to be chosen as the new commanding officer of the EUNF, or European Union Naval Forces.

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2019 CE

After a large amount of problems between himself and several other NATO leaders on how to proceed in the future and how to strenghten their military capabilities President Trump decides to leave the NATO due to them. While his actions have given numerous short term benefits, including an easier time in the research department after he loses the next election the country will suffer from negative effects caused by the long term problems his policies created, though they are nowhere near as bad as his critics claimed they would be.

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2020 CE 1st of June

Elements of the KGB hand plans to Vladimir Putin on an indirect assault on several western countries, but are refused due to the leader wishing for less trade restrictions to get himself and his people the defensive capabilities of the laser weaponry, as it could potentially be the only defence during the MAD portion of the next world war.

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2021 CE

Due to how useful they have proven during many naval excersizes and in small scale engagements against pirates by government owned merchant vessels, many governments develop a love for the idea of a laser armed naval fleet, and start either more intensive research into the devices, or opt for diplomatic approaches of the EU to see if they are willing to sell some to them.

Few conflicts are ongoing in the world and tensions between the major powers are at the lowest they have been in a long time. This is not to say that the world is prefect, however the chance of a global nuclear war has decreased drastically in comparison to how high the chance had been in the past seven decades.

The Dutch government buys a large share in the 'Lightyear One' company and places a large order for them in all land based government vehicles. The company is known for building electrical cars that are able to function fully on solar power. They also convince other EU members to perform the same action.

(They have the maximum ability to drive 800 kilometres before needing to fuel up, however because of the solar panel power system, even in the Netherlands this just means parking them outside for 9 hours in the summer, though if needed they can be fuelled up simply connecting them to an electrical network.)

At the same time, they also build eight new nuclear power plants and install solar panels on all major government facilities to supplant the rising price of fossil fuels, these projects are projected to lower the need to import fossil fuels by 75% within two years. Soon after seeing the success of these actions, other EU members follow in their footsteps. Meanwhile a combined French-German research team is making heavy advances in research surrounding Nuclear energy.

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2023 CE

The once again increasing trade world-wide and newly available wealth in Europe has them restart old space programs that were left in the dust to deal with more immediate problems until now. Due to new innovations made by different companies in Europe in Solar and Nuclear engines, space worthy vessels can now be produced at a much lower cost than before, making it viable, even for smaller countries, to take part in it and provide both ships and crew members to international efforts.

At the same type, due to an increasingly small amount of government funds needing to be spent on importing fossil fuels in most of the EU's member states, they race ahead of most of their competitors in this area, which is noticed by the other world powers. World powers such as the USA and China emulate them, though they feel insulted that they need to copy the example of an 'inferior' conglomerate of nation states.

This year also signifies the start of a large scale anti-corruption campaign in Italy, lead in part by the Catholic church essentially guilt tripping corrupt catholic politicians into either turning over a new leaf or resigning in large numbers. Meanwhile the Mafia's influence in politics is weakened somewhat by both this and after they are made known of just what will happen should they continue on like this.

While still either the most or the second most corrupt country in the EU, the situation becomes much less dire than it was before this year.

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8th of November 2025 CE

A research team in Japan has started on the process of creating an A.I. that is smarter than the current relatively 'dumb' A.I. programs available on the market.

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5th of December 2025

The death of Queen Elizabeth the second shocks the world. Though it was clear she was getting very old, people still expected her to live on, with the mythos surrounding her making her seem immortal to many. While the position of British monarch was by the time she became Queen mostly ceremonial, she still had a great social and cultural impact on not only Great Britain but also the remainder of the world, being the longest lasting British ruler.

As her son has gotten dementia the previous year and thus wouldn't be able to handle his duties as a king very well, her grandson takes over instead, and starts a subtle campaign to make the idea of re-joining the EU more attractive then it currently is, considering right now 52% of the population supports it, but for a vote to enter the EU again to work, they need 67% popular support.

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2nd of January 2026 CE

The death of another giant shocks the world. Originally seen as a short-term replacement, Pope Francis the first whom was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, managed to take the Catholic church out of its downward spiral of losing members and losing the faith of the general public that was happening when he became the leader. He did this by making the church go back to its roots somewhat, in having them become the religion of the poor that defends the weaker and oppressed members of society.

Following this mindset he made it a law for gay couples to be able to get married in a church, illegalise catholic versions of the 'Nashville' pact, cut out most of those higher tier members of the Catholic church that had fallen to corruption and ensured that no matter what rank they have in the church, anyone suspected of crimes would have the legal capabilities of a citizen of the country they performed said crimes in and that while the church will provide them with a lawyer, there will be no other legal assistance.

The only exceptions to this being in cases where the Church doesn't trust the judicial systems of whatever country the clergy member supposedly performed the crime in, in which case they provide full backing and use their international power to ensure there is a trustworthy judge overseeing the case.

Lastly he also enlarged the population of the Vatican and changed its governing laws so that instead of being a non-hereditary absolute monarchy its governing system to a non-hereditary constitutional monarchy with a democratically chosen leader for the civilian government. While the Pope would remain the head of state and head of the military, he would lose most other abilities that were given to him as part of the original position 'King' of the Vatican that a Pope would gain once they became the leader of the Catholic church.

To quote him from one of his speeches: "I would like us to make noise, I would like those inside the dioceses to go out into the open; I want the Church to be in the streets; I want us to defend ourselves against all that is worldliness, comfort, being closed and turned within.''  
and from another ''I would rather have the Church bleed out in the streets, defending the weak and defenceless, living to the founding spirit of our religion and die out fulfilling this goal rather than slowly die unnoticed on top of an ivory tower.''

The success of this was both seen and admired by many other religious groups world-wide, making them head more in that direction themselves too. It re-invigorated world-wide piety to religions, even causing numerical growth across the globe, though the percentages of religious and non-religious remain roughly the same world-wide as the numerical increase doesn't match the global population growth.

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5th of June 2026 CE

Greece finds large deposits of gold, silver and iron on and near several of their smaller islands. This newfound material wealth in combination with a change in government structure on top of giving all EU countries they have a debt to a share of a number of the mines proportional to the debt they owe the country, is used to pay off a large part of their debt to their debtors both inside and outside of Europe, finally silencing most of the groups that wanted to throw them out of the European Union and other international organisations.

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2027 CE

Norway, Iceland, Ukraine and the Vatican all join the European Union during this year.

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2028 CE

A small settlement is formed on the moon, which is now officially designated as 'Luna', governed directly by the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs. It will grow at a fast rate, while prototype solar powered artificial gravity machines heighten the gravity to near Earth Level gravity, with large underground agricultural complexes providing food. By the end of the first year of its existence, close to 9000 people from countries all around the world live there.

While the whole project costs billions more than it will make in many decades or even a century, it signals that colonization of other planets inside the solar system is possible and gains more public approval for the idea of extra-terrestrial colonies.

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2030 CE

Great Britain joins the EU once again, however this time around the country will have stricter guide lines and a new agreement is formed that in case the country wants to leave the EU again they will need strong majority vote in parliament or a three fourths majority vote in a referendum, instead of the government being forced to go along with what was little more than an opinion poll among the population and treat it like an actual vote at 52% for leaving and 48% against leaving.

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2031 CE

Turkey joins the EU.

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2032 CE

The USA gives a demonstration of their new fully tested weapon: a move-able and reliable rail gun design which functions as the main gun of a new class of battleship. While railguns in and of themselves already existed before they were overall very unreliable and little more than a curiosity rather than an actual front line weapon It becomes highly sought after by all countries that don't have a friendly relationship with the EU and gives a much needed boost to the country's economy after an economic crisis that kept worsening for close to 25 years.

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2033 CE

Upon realising that even with all the funds put into it space colonisation will not advance fast enough to prevent an international famine caused by the growth rate of the human population in time, it is decided by the EU to collectively start a project of terraforming regions that are deserts worldwide into actually useful land. While this is going on, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland also start another project the Dutch have had a large amount of experience with for the past millennium: gaining land from the sea through poldering.

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2034 CE

China discovers a way to produce plasma based weaponry, which while less powerful and slower than both railguns and laser weaponry, has one massive advantage: it's extremely cheap to make and doesn't need much in the way of cooling systems, unlike laser weapons, and doesn't need anywhere near as expensive ammunition or maintenance as the Railgun weapons do.

Also unlike both laser and railgun technology, it can be made small enough to be reliably used by non-mechanised infantry, though at this point it loses most of its advantages in comparison to gunpowder based fire-arms since the guns small enough to be used by infantry have a rate of fire only slightly higher than muskets. Meaning that while good as anti-vehicle weapons, they fare terribly in infantry against infantry battles.

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2035 CE

After the initial success of the International settlement on Luna (now called 'New Hope'), new settlements are started by individual nations, though the EU through their space agency ESA decides to also form some shared ones under ESA control. Small scale conflict sometimes exists between these settlements, causing the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs to get a large raise in funding to handle the diplomacy between the different settlements and regions.

By the end of this year, there are roughly 8.9 billion humans, with 1.6 million of those living on Luna and everyone else on Earth. Plans are drawn up for both the permanent settlement of Mars and the terraforming of areas of the Red Planet.

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1st of June 2036

After months of negotiating, with the EU assisting and working as a diplomat to soothe out differences, the African Union is reborn, though this time much more stable. Its founding members are Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Madagascar and South-Africa.

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15th of June 2036

After being approached by the EU about the possibility of terraforming parts of the Sahara desert into farmable lands, the newly born African Union polls their populations about the idea, and with an overwhelmingly positive response they accept the proposal, agreeing to make it a shared investment.

The end result of the negotiations after this is as follows, the African Union pays the local labour forces and other work crews, the European Union will pay the actual specialists and supply the equipment for not only the terraforming, but also all agricultural efforts in the region for 5 years after the conclusion of the project.

All profits will be for the African Union, however in return they will become an ally of the European Union politically, sign a mutual defence pact and curtail illegal immigration towards European countries as much as they can, in the long term also accepting those who migrate back to the African Union from Europe.

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30th of June 2036

The actual project starts, currently named 'Desert Paradise', it is expected to take between 15 and 20 years to fully realize it. After this period of time however, and with the promised farming techniques and equipment the European Union will bring in, the area is expected to be able to feed a 350% larger population then it currently has, which is saying something considering that the regions current population has to import close to half of their food and other agricultural products.

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1st of December 2036 CE

After many failed attempts, the research into creating a true A.I. bears fruit, with the Japanese A.I. gaining sentience. The A.I., that doesn't show a preference to any gender yet at this point, has many discussions with the researchers, but is currently restricted to living in a single room, with no access to the internet or any technology other than its own body.

That body is rooted to the ground in-case it decides to fight its creators for one reason or the other. While all these precautions are taken, the AI is treated well by the scientists, who subconsciously have begun to see it as their 'child', while the AI sees them as its family. This type of A.I. will later be known as a 'Synthetic Smart A.I.'.

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1st of June 2037 CE

International scouting missions on Mars have shown a multitude of secluded and relatively easy to terraform spots, which has the UN call all countries worldwide together and gives each country the chance to choose spots, with the sizes of the claims being determined by a mix of how much the country of origin needs it, how capable they would be of actually reaching the spot and how well they would be able to make use of it. This event will later be considered the start of the Era of Colonisation.

To prepare for possible problems caused by the predicted expansion into space, a vote is held to give the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs permission and some funds to build/buy a small navy of space capable combat vessels, and hire both the crews for those vessels and the ground forces to take on planet-based problems on planets other than Earth.

In the same convention, somehow renaming the planet Earth into something else comes up, as something that in the same language used for the word translates to 'dirt' might not be the best idea when potentially interacting with another species, and it is agreed that names can be sent in for the next year by every country that is a UN member state, with a vote being held 6 months after the suggestions are all in.

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1st of December 2037 CE

Countries from all over the world have offered designs for combat capable space vehicles for the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs, but four design series show the most promise, the Defender Series sent in by the EU collectively through their shared space agency ESA, the Xing Series designs sent in by the Chinese government, the Kalvari Series from India and the Armstrong Series from the USA.

They are seen as useful for very different reasons, the EU designs are seen as such due to them having the best engines, the highest quality laser weaponry and somewhat better armour than most of the others. However the problem is, they are also very expensive to build in comparison to most other designs, especially the Chinese ones.

The Chinese designs meanwhile have the highest level of cost-effectiveness and can transport much larger numbers of people and goods during missions then any of the others, while the Indian ships have the best armour however both are highly underpowered on the weapons front due to using plasma based main guns, while their engines are much less energy efficient then both the European and American designs.

Lastly while the Armstrong series are the most powerful offensively they are for the most part glass canons and can relatively easily be taken down if the opponent knows the design well enough due to both the armour being inefficient against indirect hits and a design flaw in the power delivery system that causes the engines to not be able to be used while firing the main gun.

They are however the only design that effectively uses railguns as their main weapons, which causes them to have another offensive advantage against the other designs since most were built along the idea that railguns and other such weapons would be at best the secondary weapons of any ship, causing their armour to be geared towards defending against the effects of laser and plasma weaponry due to the extremely high speed and power of the first and the low production and maintenance costs of the second.

Eventually its decided to go with the Defender Series designs for the majority of the actual warships, the remainder being the Armstrong series, while they will go with the Xing Series designs for troop transports, passenger ships and bulk goods transports. Scouting and exploration vessels will be divided between the Defender and the Xing series.

During this discussion, the possibility of a hostile first contact comes up as an eventuality they have to prepare for, and that while the creation of more mobile defences such as ships should be restricted, the use of orbital defence platforms to defend both the home-world and all future human colonies is taken into consideration. It is agreed upon to return to this subject once the first actual ships have finished production, to give both the side for the idea and the side against the idea good arguments and an idea about the actual economic practicality of the devices.

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1st of May 2038 CE

All suggestions for the planetary name change have been sent in and have been noted down. During this year Japan has decided to open up to the world about their creation of an A.I., and after some discussion and international fear it is decided to let the A.I. talk to the UN in person, however it will be restricted to a robot that has a very large storage capacity so that the A.I. can be comfortable, but also unknown to said A.I. a kill switch that can be immediately activated the moment it turns hostile, with the robot body also having no real cyberwarfare capabilities.

This meeting will happen a week after the election for the new international name of the planet Earth on official UN documentation and in potential future contact with alien life forms.

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1st of July 2038 CE

To ensure that there is a recent index on which population numbers can be checked to keep vote manipulation through added fake votes of already dead or non-existent citizens as low as possible, the UN sends out inspectors specie wide to ensure the fairness of this index. The total human population of 9225060542, or slightly more than 9,225 billion people. 9,105 Billion of these people live on Earth while 120 million people live spread out over the moon and a number of space stations surrounding both the home-world, its moon and the new orbital shipyard.

1st of November 2038 CE

While many ideas are brought up and discussed during the meeting, the three ideas that are the most widely supported are the names 'Terra' (Latin for 'The ground we stand upon'), المهد الذي ولدنا منه (Arabic for 'The cradle from which we were born') and 那些為勝利而生的人的家(Chinese for 'Home to those born for victory').

Though all three are regarded positively worldwide for the most part, the Latin and Arabic names are the most likely ones to actually be successful considering that while the thought of a victorious mankind pleases all national leaders, they are diplomatic enough to realize any alien they got into contact with would probably be deeply offended.

Though a few of them do not care much about that, especially the Chinese representatives. Eventually the votes go 44% for Terra, 38% for المهد الذي ولدنا منه (Arabic) and 18% for 那些為勝利而生的人的家 (Chinese). With this the question of what to name the home-world is finished, however the future is still uncertain with the debate between UN delegates and the young AI comping up in the next week.

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8th of November 2038 CE

On this day, the UN holds its meeting with the young synthetic A.I., who by this point has developed her own identity, considering herself female and changing her avatar to resemble a Japanese woman in her late teens. She also treats the scientists that worked on the project of creating her as her family members, calls them her aunts and uncles, with the head of the project being her father figure. As a name she has chosen Himara, in reference to her appearance before she had a fully formed identity (a ball of light).

The robot body has been changed to accommodate this relatively recent occurrence, and now has a series of projectors installed that will project the chosen appearance over the metal body. This will most likely also have the positive side effect of making both the general public and the people debating with the A.I. more at ease due to the somewhat familiar looks.

During the meeting, which is televised all across the globe, the Himara not only answers all questions peacefully which takes away many of the concerns the U.N. general assembly and the public at large had but also gives a rousing speech, winning over many to the cause of seeing her as an equal to a human.

Shortly after the end of this speech, a vote is held on giving A.I's that are found to be sentient equal treatment to what the local law would give to humans. The law passes by 87% votes for and 13% against, and though the Russian government is part of the faction that votes against they don't use their veto for an unknown reason.

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24th of February 2039 CE

The first human space based warship finishes construction, it is the new Defender series frigate, with 9 more of these, 1 Defender series cruiser, 3 Armstrong series frigates, 8 Xing series freighter class troop transports that will double as passenger transports for new colonies until nation-states have their own ships , 6 Xing series freighter class goods transports, 2 Defender series exploration corvettes and 2 Xing series exploration corvettes in production and scheduled to be finished sometime later that same year.

This event restarts the discussion about Orbital Defence Platforms, or ODP's for short. The idea is approved of, however while nation states are allowed to build and own their personal space based mobile fleets, the stations will always be under the direct command of the UN Office of Extraplanetary Affairs. A design committee is created from several high ranked officers from the UN forces, though this time the contractors and designers are in service the UN personally instead of simply being provided by its member states.

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2nd of March 2039 CE

While the project desert paradise is still a long way from being completed, the terraforming project to create more land where there is currently sea is well on its way towards completion and has given the EU 3% more land, however this land is all capable of supporting crops and with the advanced Dutch farming techniques it will be more efficient than nearly all other similarly sized agricultural production areas worldwide.

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1st of June 2039 CE

The terraforming of Mars by humanity begins. One of the first things done is starting the work on stabilising the atmosphere and through this the general temperature of Mars so that liquid water can exist on it without either boiling or icing over. After that the locations selected for colonisation get weather regulation devices and other terraforming tools to ensure they will eventually become self-sufficient.

The temperature stabilisation is partially done by bringing a load of ice-meteorites filled with water into the planets atmosphere while also using a load of oil and gas using generators to ensure the atmosphere surrounding the planet thickens while also ensuring there will be enough cold water in both solid and fluid form to stabilise it even more.

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3rd of November 2039 CE

The first colonies on Mars start springing up, with the UN freighters transporting people and goods towards these new colonies.

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January 2040 CE

Nation states start producing their own space navies, during production of the European ships it is decided that they need a new non-pulse based weapon since said pulse laser weaponry has turned out to have a somewhat short range in space before losing a large amount of its power during an actual combat situation the new ships have had against a Xing series frigate that had been hijacked by extremists.

To counter this flaw project 'Broadside' is started, owing its strange name to a bet between the scientists working on it. The contents of the bet were lost to time sadly enough. It is offered to refit the currently in production and already produced Defender designs free of charge once a solution has been found. Seeing as even with this flaw, the ships and their weapons are still equal in capability to all of the others, the UN Office of Extraplanetary Affairs accepts this offer without too much fuss.

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2041 CE

During this year Zimbabwe, Ivory coast and Ethiopia join the African Union while Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia join the European union. The first prototypes for space capable fighter jets are made known to the public, after one of them gets filmed taking out an asteroid heading for the capital of Luna (the moon), New Hope.

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2042 CE

Problems start brewing in both the northern parts of India and the country's extraplanetary colonies, with the friction between various political and social movements increasing severely. This unrest is partially caused by a combination the large scale corruption in the government becoming clearer with the day, which all political parties and ideologies blame one of the other groups for, but also partially by a growing shortage of both food and luxury products in the colonies on Luna and Mars.

These shortages are caused by the government refusing to buy space-ships from other countries even though it is clear their own current fleet cannot handle the amount of goods that need to be transported to the colonies on a monthly basis.

During this same year, the African Union as a whole votes to join NATO through both parliamentary votes in all their nation states and a Union wide forum. The forum gets approval with 80% of the votes for, 20% against. Meanwhile the parliamentary votes all also get voted positive, though in most cases with slightly more difficulty.

Shortly after this a shared fleet command for both wet-water naval ships and space-bound naval ships is formed, a combined effort of the ESA, EUNF and the various individual nation-state fleets from Africa. While each country will still command their own ships, any combined fleet actions are commanded through the newly formed UFC (Union Fleet Command)

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April 2043 CE

Worried by the reports originating from India and their colonies, an emergency session of the EU is called together and after some discussion they decide to bring the problem to the annual UN meeting the next week. This happens and after some discussions including India itself it is decided that unless India can start properly supplying her colonies in the next three months an international humanitarian mission will be set up for them, but they will also temporarily come under the control of the UN office for extra planetary affairs, with a referendum and vote being held afterwards on what the inhabitants of the colony want to have done.

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21st of July 2043

The situation in the colonies governed by India hasn't improved, with the current government seeming to try to change the situation however all attempts fail due to corruption among many higher ranked members of the government, including several of their ministers. As per the demands put down by the UN, the office for extra-planetary affairs gathers their forces and marches on the colonies on Luna and Mars, with orbital and air support provided both by their own navy and a number of ships from the USA, China and the UFC.

While the government of India back on Earth proclaims that their colonies will stand and fight till the bitter end against such a cowardly international attack…. All except for a single small settlement on Luna surrender immediately. During the only skirmish of this campaign it is shown just how bad the supply problem was: the Indian troops were forced to surrender after less than fifteen minutes because they were out of ammunition for literally every single weapon they had which could actually damage the vehicles used by the forces.

While initially making statements on how they will retaliate for this after little more than a stern talking to and another show of force, by the way of the UN Office of Extra-Planetary Affairs parking all their warships in orbit above India, the Indian government backs down. Within a few hours afterwards with near unanimous votes the former colonies of India declare themselves independent while humanitarian aid from nation-states from both Terra and their Lunarian and Martian colonies arrive.

Losses:

India: 60 soldiers dead, 90 soldiers have surrendered to the enemy.

UN coalition: 20 soldiers dead, 15 soldiers wounded.

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August 2043 to May 2044 CE

The current government of India on Terra abdicates after severe protests, with an international peace-keeping force being organised and sent in to try to calm the situation. It works, with little violence actually occurring and the tensions cooling down. After new elections, which are won by a relative newcomer, corruption in the lower ranks of government is also lessened over time, causing a decent economic growth, which cools the situation down even more until the international mission leaves in late May the year after.

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2045 CE

The UN Office of Extraplanetary Affairs builds the first four ODP's this year, all of them taking up positions over Earth. While looking into designing them they realized that while ODP stations using railguns would have better firing speeds and range than laser based ones, supplying them would be a significantly larger issue than supplying those canons of regular ships would be.

Because of this only one in every four of the currently planned first wave of 40 ODP's will be a railgun design, the other thirty will be using lasers for the first wave. These will be the more powerful designs, after this smaller and weaker ODP's are planned to be made as a second wave of sorts, mainly made like this to be easier to transport. Of these most will be plasma based ODP's, since they are both cheaper and easier to move around than laser designs while also cheaper and easier to supply than railgun designs, while of the twenty planned two will be laser designs and one will be a railgun design.

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2047 CE

China finally has enough of the problems caused by their supposed ally, North Korea, and the incompetence with which the country is ruled. They device a plan, and start an infiltration campaign of the higher ranks of the North-Korean government. During this same year the first UN regulated hydrogen mining expeditions near Jupiter take place.

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2048 CE

The Chinese president, Ji Huan, decides that after not having had a violent conflict with any of the western powers in decades and only positive interactions with them during his term, to start acting more friendly to not only them but also their policies. While many populist politicians outside of it like to boast that Europe is the old world, the paper tiger, he realizes that even as weakened as they have been by losing most of their former empires, if any European nation outside of Russia gets attacked, the attackers will face most of the militarily strongest, most advanced and economically powerful nations in the world coming to the side of the defender.

The only nations that on their own actually stand a chance at taking them on with a decent chance of winning, are his own and the USA, even then it would be doubtful if that chance is truly very high considering both of them were very dependent on several materials and goods imported from Europe and their African allies to keep their economies going. These things in combination with the fact that he wants international approval to start up his plan of absorbing parts of North-Korea into China, giving other pieces to South-Korea to get them on his side, he would like it to have at least Europe support him.

He starts lightening the censor on the press, it stays but is now much less extreme, afterwards he starts giving press conferences to enable the idea of his government becoming clearer and allowing the population to know more. Many other, mostly small, changes follow, with China gradually changing not only the worlds opinion about itself, but also bit by bit changing its national identity.

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2052 CE

In Germany the first nuclear powered tank is created, which brings a new boost to the tank and car industries in Germany, allowing the European Union to flourish even more. Though the solar powered cars produced in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany stay at the top in civilian products, nuclear powered vehicles quickly start making advances on the still fossil fuel dominated military markets.

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March 2054 to October 2054 CE

Saudi Arabia is in chaos, after the constant downwards spiral it has been in for the past 42 years. The main reason behind their economic success, fossil fuels, with oil in particular being important, has been fading for all that time, and while there were movements to shift the economy to focus on other things rather than oil, it was too little too late after a succession crisis in the late 2020's the government came into the hands of a man with high military, but low economic capabilities, that was also a staunch traditionalist.

In that same period of time, due to the decreased support from the home-country, their specific stream of Islam, Wahabism, started failing. Many who were part of it converted to other less extreme forms of Islam, simply because the Imams became less and less capable, which was only worsened by the unwillingness of the Saudi government to change slightly with the times to keep the religion more accepting and relevant to new generations.

A short but brutal democratic rebellion where close to a third of the army sides with the rebels instead of the original government forces the UN to intervene, after which they force both sides onto the negotiation table. They eventually come to a compromise which will be hashed out further and announced to the public on the 15th of November.

Losses:

Rebels: 5 tanks, 110 IFV's, 30 anti-tank pieces, 19 anti-air pieces, 25 artillery pieces destroyed. 11000 soldiers dead, 5500 heavily wounded, 15000 lightly wounded.

Royalists: 12 tanks, 210 IFV's, 35 anti-tank pieces, 12 anti-air pieces, 40 artillery pieces, 12 helicopters and 1 jet fighter destroyed. 8000 soldiers dead, 5000 heavily wounded, 2000 lightly wounded.

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15th of November 2054

The official signing of the declaration of peace between the democratic rebels and the royalists happens, with Saudi Arabia becoming a Constitutional Monarchy, with the Kings having a larger amount of power then they have in most of those same systems elsewhere in the world, but are still restrained by both law itself and the power of the democratically voted for senate.

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2056 CE

President Ji Huan of China has been far more successful in his efforts than that he could ever have hoped and though his nation is still a single party state he has discovered he actually likes the challenges that the now real elections between him and other candidates have given him, since it sharpens not only his own skills but also the capabilities of his party members and the actions during campaigning strengthen their popularity among the people.

On top of that, the press, even though it is free from some of the censoring and scripted articles that would have been put in there before, still writes about him positively for the most part, while most of the time anything negative was written it would usually also be praising other things about him in other parts of the article to soften the negative tone.

Lastly for the first time in more than a century, there is a peace reaching further than a simple non-aggression pact between the communist Chinese government and the nationalist/democratic Chinese government on Taiwan. The historical moment is welcomed by the world with open arms and amazement.

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2059 CE

After several large scale internationally known political, humanitarian and economical blunders caused by the aging leader of North-Korea, the Northern 50% is taken over by China directly, with the Southern 50% being given to South-Korea including the North's former capital. While there is grumbling among the general population in South-Korea about the fact that part of the country is absorbed into China on governmental levels all is silent.

Outside of a small portion of fanatically loyal soldiers and a number of high-ranking officers, consisting of only some .4% of the entire army officially maintained by North Korea, surrender immediately to Southern and Chinese forces upon those entering the country. This is caused by a combination of the sheer resource shortages and Chinese infiltrators in many relatively high ranking positions, the first making some 65% of the army unable to fight at all while the second causes the other 39.6% to surrender upon sight of opposing forces.

While the loyalist troops try to fight on, they are severely weakened by the loss of nearly all of the command structure and the only resistance that actually takes large scale effort to overcome is fought by a three-thousand strong unit defending Kim-Jong un personally. Due to the opposing South Korean forces having superiority on every front though the battle still takes less than four hours and ends in the death of Kim Jong un and the entire bodyguard unit.

This demoralizes what few soldiers around the country still willing to fight for North Korea, causing them to either commit suicide or lay their weapons down less than two hours after the news has been spread throughout the country. After this both armies just march until the previously agreed occupation zones while logistical units and medical teams race in behind them to feed the populace and heal any wounded in the territory their respective countries have now taken.

Unknown to the general populous China was so finished with North-Korea and how they kept embarrassing socialism as a whole and Asian communism specifically, that they have agreed to gradually give all Chinese occupied parts of North-Korea to the South in exchange for China gaining some of the rights to owning colonial territory on Mars that South-Korea owned, which had gone without use due to a very low population growth.

The leadership of both countries is happy at this decision, as it means for the South that they will finally see a united Korea under democratic rule, their own democratic rule. Meanwhile China after seeing just how much work and time would need to be put in to make North-Korea anything other then a resource and cash sink, decides that instead giving their people fertile land to farm and live on located on another planet is the better end of the deal.

On top of this the European powers have shown their support for this decision by offering to use their terraforming technology to further expand fertile land back on China's Terran lands, where large portions of the country aren't suited for any industry or agricultural activity outside of light grazing by animal herds.

These happenings cause the population to see the communists party and Ji Huan in particular in an even more positive light, slowly transforming them into an actual party for the people, as they have always proclaimed themselves to be. It also takes away most remaining tensions towards Europe among most Chinese citizens. Though still not a country of the free or modern democracy, western countries realize it is better for those living there than pretty much any previous Chinese government has been to their population in millennia.

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2062 CE

The first organic AI is created on accident when somebody tries to create a Synthetic AI with a more human base instead of computer-based mind to lower the cost of creating and educating new AI's, which is currently high enough that it roughly equals the GDP of small but still rich countries like Luxembourg. The variation of AI is accepted by the international community with relative ease and little in the way of social issues, however the UN declares for no new ones to be created until further research has been done into them.

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2063 CE

Several tests have shown devastating results in regards to the new organic AI: while the AI is as capable if not better than a synthetic AI, unlike their more Synthetic brethren that have a life-span of slightly more than a century, the new organic AI will only live for two or three years before thinking themselves to death.

The head researcher to the project, who had lost his wife and daughter years earlier in a traffic accident and had come to see the young AI as his own son, falls into a deep depression and is later found by that very AI in his room, dead by hanging himself. The AI, who had seen the man as a parental figure grieves badly and commits suicide by data destruction himself less than a month afterwards.

The entire incident shocks the international community badly enough that during the UN emergency meeting less than a week later a law to ban creation of organic AI until such a time where they know enough about the subject to expand their life-span by at least several decades is passed near unanimously.

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2065 CE

Australia starts hiring experts from all over the world to terraform their lands, as there starts being a fear of their mines running out of minerals at some point, causing them to feel the need to have a second production in the form of a large enough scale of agriculture to fall back upon in case the mines dry up.

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2069 CE

By this point in time, the only fossil fuel vehicles still around are some antiques in museums and people's personal collections, by now the market is filled entirely in a competition between nuclear powered vehicles (dominating the market for larger vehicles such as transport trucks, trains, busses and military vehicles), solar powered vehicles (dominating the market for smaller vehicles such as family cars, race cars, taxi's, etc.) and general electric vehicles (like most motor bikes and older family cars).

The past few decades are regarded by many to be the most or at the very least one of the most peaceful times in human history, with no wars of significance having occurred in close to half a century by now. Meanwhile medical research has created vaccines and cures for most diseases by this point, with the only remaining highly lethal diseases that keep escaping their capability to fully solve being numerous forms of cancer and some variants of measles.

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2070 CE

The UN Office of Extra-Planetary affairs opens the Martian shipyards, a place where all Terran designs their countries of origin agree to make available for international production can be bought by national governments, where the Office of Extra-planetary affairs will from now on also build a large portion of their own ships.

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2072 CE

The scouting and research of the moon Titan for the potential of housing human life in the future is started.

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2074 CE

It is found that while with some terraforming Titan could be turned into a planet capable of bearing human life, the amount of resources needed for this will cause the plan to have to be frozen for now while the terraforming of Mars and certain regions of the Earth are currently going on.

In this same year a project in China to make plasma based shielding devices to defend colonies from asteroid strikes and out of control ships is started. While it might at some point also have true military applications if successful, beforehand it was already calculated that the power required for early devices to function in such a job would need a generator close to equal in size to the actually shielded area.

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2075 CE

A new group of people has slowly been growing into existence in human space, commercial traders able to use freighters in space. This has lessened the strain on national navies whom where previously needed to deliver all products to their colonies, where now non-essential products are starting to be transported by the commercial freighters.

Meanwhile on the other end of the Galaxy, relations between the Quarian migrant fleet and the Citadel Council have reached a new low after an overzealous Turian commander attacked a group of Quarian pilgrims that had been settling in on a shared Volus-Turian colony, with the only reason a war hadn't been started having been a small group of nearby Krogan lead by Urdnot Wrex interfering and chasing off the Turians before they managed to do any serious damage.

In return for his deeds, both now and in the far past shortly after the Geth uprising, the Quarian Migrant fleet sees Urdnot Wrex as an ally for the Quarian people, promising him their support if he ever decides to go back to Tuchanka in an attempt to lead his clan again. While grateful for the support and thankful for the in with migrant fleet, the Krogan mercenary declines it for now still feeling his people are not worth the effort to try to better themselves.

No matter his personal feelings though, the incident improves relations from the Quarian Migrant fleet towards the Krogan in general, which frightens the Citadel Council badly, as it has them fearing for a Krogan-Quarian Alliance that would cause the two disadvantaged groups to strike back at those oppressing them, in this case the Citadel Council.

At the same time the Quarian Migrant fleet becomes more aggressive in securing the safety of their people while on pilgrimages, lessening the abuse suffered by Quarians at the hands of less than scrupulous employers or planetary governments, out of fear of getting a fleet of thousands of ships coming knocking on their doors with charged main guns aimed at them seeking vengeance.

Because sure those ships would mostly be scrap metal bolted together kept flying by hope and extraordinary technical and mechanical skill, however the simple fact was that even then most non-Turian planetary governments didn't have more than a dozen or so military vessels to defend themselves, making even the weakest ships dangerous enough with such an overwhelming numerical advantage in combination with the fact that Quarian pilots and naval officers would on average be far more experienced in combat operations than their counterparts on the planetary defence flotilla's.

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2076 CE

The Geth discover more about the increased hostility between the Quarians and the Citadel Council, causing a weeklong debate between all programs that are part of the collective. Eventually they come to the conclusion: Should the Citadel Council be the one to open hostilities between themselves and the Quarian Migrant Fleet, then the Geth will unleash their full might upon the galaxy in defence of their creators, who have in the opinion of the Geth as a collective species suffered more than enough for their sin of turning upon their child.

The Geth start producing a new fleet, which they designate: Shield of the Migrants which will be 3500 ships strong. This fleet will have the best and newest ships available, including ten dreadnoughts, one-hundred ninety cruisers, two-thousand frigates and one thousand three hundred corvettes. Meanwhile Rannoch is mostly cleared of Geth life-forms outside of those needed to maintain the planet while they move those that resided there mostly to one that is sixty-four lightyears away that they discovered themselves, which they designate New Rannoch. This planet is the farthest away from the Galactic community possible within Quarian space and also contains no nearby relays.

In the same year, the Chinese experiment with plasma based shielding is closed down. While originally having some success, they ended up at a point where they couldn't advance the devices further without large scale practical tests, which were impossible to do since even a single-use shield covering anything larger than a medium sized couch would cost billions, after which dozens of similar tests would need to be done to improve it only to then move on to multi-use shields and the miniaturization of them, all of which combined would cost at the very least years, possibly even slightly more than a decade. The calculated total cost would be close to the entire Chinese GDP during whatever period the tests would be held, which was understandably an unacceptably high cost to the Chinese government.

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2078 CE

Agricultural scientists at the institute of Wageningen in the Netherlands manage to genetically create a strain of potatoes that are able to thrive in continues sub-zero Celsius temperatures and conditions. Less than a week afterwards, the Russian government is in negotiations with the European Union about acquiring the potato strain in order to turn some of the Tundra they have into farmland that can be used to feed the Russian population.

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2079 CE

The first prototype humanoid AI body that actually feels and has senses in all the same ways as humans is created. Several are bought in advance by nations that wish to use them as a way to reward their higher ranking AI personnel. Several rich AI pour together funds and collectively buy one of the first bodies for Himari, the first true AI, as a sign of thanks for how well she won the hearts of Humanity, making it a relatively easy job for AI to fit in with the general population.

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2080 CE

A new way of creating Synthetic Artificial intelligences is discovered, that is not only cheaper but is also expected to improve the life expectancy of whatever AI made by it by at least 10% in comparison to the previous creation method, though the increase in life expectancy may possibly be vastly larger than that.

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2081 CE

Higher quality personalised combat bodies partially based upon the humanoid bodies brought onto the market two years ago are produced by nations around the world to enable AI to serve as the bodyguards of nation leaders and to also allow them to support their human comrades in fighting back in more personal ways if the installations they are stationed on were to come under attack better than with the previous ungainly ones.

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2082 CE

An index is done of the total Terran population, and it is found out to currently be 12230503270 or in other words twelve billion two-hundred and thirty million five-hundred and three thousand two-hundred seventy people. Of this number, roughly nine billion live on Earth, around eight-hundred million living on the moon, two billion and four-hundred million living on Mars with the remaining population living on various space stations, mining colonies on Asteroids or as permanent residents to the space-ships or stations they work and live on together with their families. On top of this there are some three thousand AI spread out throughout Terran space, that are counted as part of the earlier 12230503270 number.

What is found out strangely enough is that the growth of both the Asian and African populations has slowed down heavily, with a large portion of their actual population growth being due to a severe increase in life expectancy over the past few decades before their population stabilized, while the Western, especially European population growth has all but sky-rocketed ever since the colonization of Mars, causing the numerical disadvantage the EU had in comparison to most other major Terran powers to shrink heavily while on the other hand the GDP per inhabitant of those same other powers has been steadily climbing and getting closer to the European GDP per inhabitant.

Meanwhile the continues project of terraforming Mars has shown its fruits in full finally, with the planet now having a fully functioning atmosphere suitable for human life. While not yet anywhere near good conditions in comparison to some areas back on Earth, the planet exists mostly out of mountain ranges and deserts, however around current human settlements savannah's stretch out for many kilometres due to the red sand of mars slowly being transformed into a form of dirt by a terraforming technique the British discovered on accident in a lab back on Earth.

The savannah regions have proven positive as agricultural land, causing a baby boom of sorts and emigrations of those remaining few with a low quality of life back on Earth towards the previously red planet. Meanwhile several previously thought inhabitable regions of Siberia are terraformed, and while most cannot be used for agriculture even with the new strain of potato, many places before inhospitable for plant life can now be used to plant trees on previously near worthless ground, causing Russia's wood export to Mars and Luna to rise giving a prospect of future population growth.

It has also been found out that by this point in time, that when referring to a collective of both themselves and their AI companions, most humans use the term 'Terran' to name the group. It is theorized that if friendly contact is made with an alien group in the future and they join the Systems Alliance, that the chances are high they will eventually be considered part of that same interspecies group of 'Terrans' by at the very least a large portion of humanity.

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2090 CE

Russia lets it be known internationally that it is making moves to join the European Union, which has an overall positive effect on its international reputation. Also for the first time in more than a century, the population of Russia is growing in the sense of population increase through birth and immigration once again, which many attribute to their better relations with the remainder of the world.

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2095 CE

The Russian Federation officially joins the European Union as a member state, with economical analysts world-wide foreseeing at the worst a modest economical growth for all members of the Union, at best a growth strong enough to increase their GDP by 45% in the next three years, with inflation caused by the economic growth not being calculated into this number as part of the growth.

Later in the same year, an international combined effort of the scientists belonging to the various space navies of the USA, the European Union (including Russia), China, India and the Union of Oceania is started to try and find a method to either use faster than light or at the very least lightspeed travelling methods to ensure humanity can expand beyond Sol in the future.

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2097 CE

The idea offered by the Republic of India of terraforming Titan to make it suitable for human life as a long term project is put into action the UN, though since both this and the scouting groups are seen as extremely long term projects the amount of resources assigned to it is far smaller than the amount that had previously been assigned to the terraforming of Mars had been. On the other hand it is concluded that due to previous experiences with Terraforming Mars and the advances in both the techniques and technology used for terraforming caused by that the process will be much easier. The terraforming progress is expected to be finished in the early 2150's.

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2100 CE

During this year an international coalition formed out of all nation-states with a current space-based navy forms to debate on a Terran wide ship classification system, to ensure much easier coordination with each other if they ever find themselves facing an external threat.

Zero to twenty metres long space ship are considered either fighters, gunships or shuttles, depending on both their purpose and their armament into which group they fall.

Corvettes are combat ships between twenty to eighty meters in length meant to be used as scouting vessels, stealth ships, picket ships, ground support units, anti-fighter support or lastly as police cutters.

Light frigates are combat ships between the size of eighty and two-hundred meters, with the light intending to mean frigates for lighter duties, like large picket ships, diplomatic vessels, ground support, stealth ships, anti-fighter vessels, light flanking vessels and the command ships of law enforcement flotilla's.

Light freighters are transport ships of between fifty and two-hundred meters in length, these are usually either troop transports or passenger ships. While in emergencies they can be used as goods transports, this will usually be left to larger ships because it isn't an economically positive prospect.

Heavy frigates are combat ships between the sizes of one-hundred-fifty and three-hundred meters in length, these are the smallest ships still considered capital ships by Terran doctrine. Meant as the smallest ships in full frontal battles and as the heavy punch in flanking manoeuvres. It is intended for ships of this class to be the future backbone of the garrison and quick reaction fleets once humanity expands outside of Sol.

Medium freighters are transport ships of between two-hundred and five-hundred meters in length, these are usually either troop transports or goods transports. A number of cruise ships will most likely also fall into this category, however since there are none of those in such sizes for space-craft yet and they also won't be able to serve as much in emergency situations except luxurious evacuation ships the coalition doesn't care much about them.

Light cruisers are combat ships between the sizes of three-hundred and six-hundred meters in length, the second smallest capital class of ships, these are intended to be the command ships of patrol groups and the leading ships in the garrisons of small or very safely located colonies. They are also intended to become the backbone of most fleet actions and the largest possible vessels assigned as ground support to take out anti-orbital emplacements.

Heavy freighters are transport ships of between six-hundred and one-thousand meters in length, meant as bulk goods transports and large scale evacuation ships in case a colony comes under attack with there being a good chance of its naval garrison not being able to hold full control of the orbitals against the enemy.

Heavy cruisers are combat ships of between six-hundred and one thousand meters, meant as the flag ships of smaller QRF's, the flag ships of most naval garrisons to colonies in dangerous territories outside of Sol and the mainline heavy ships in use by the Terran navies. The flag ships of the navies of most smaller and medium sized Terran nation states will most likely also be of this calibre. Also meant to be used as the spear-point of fleet actions into heavily defended enemy territory.

Light dreadnoughts are combat ships of between one thousand and fifteen-hundred meters, intended as the flag ship for regular admirals. Also meant to be the heaviest ship class still in use as the commanding ship of garrison fleets outside of Sol, the flag ship of larger QRF's, flag ships of smaller regular fleets as mentioned earlier and the backup command ships for Terran Assault fleets or the Sol home defence fleet. Lastly they are also meant to be the flagships of those nation-states with the largest navies around or conglomerated navies, like the UFC.

Light Carriers are combat support ships of between one thousand and fifteen-hundred meters in the Terran navies, who will usually have the same type of main guns that either a light or heavy cruiser would field however their largest weapons will be a combination of broad-side weapons and fighters. These vessels will be intended to serve as the command ships of planetary invasion forces and as giant heavily armoured troop transports into hostile situations where freighters of any kind wouldn't survive long enough to bring the ground forces towards the battlefield. Will take command of Terran fleets in case any and all dreadnoughts are either dead or rendered combat ineffective.

Heavy dreadnoughts are combat ships of between fifteen-hundred and two-thousand five hundred meters, intended as the flag ships of theatre commanders, the mainstream command ships of assault fleets and the flag ships for planetary fleets in the Sol home defence fleet. Will also partially be meant as a booster for the morale of Terran soldiers and naval personnel as a way of saying: ''We bring all our might, will you answer?'' to any future enemies when brought onto the battlefield. One of these is predicted to serve as the future flag-ship of the entire Terran navy.

Heavy carriers is a name assigned to any carrier larger than fifteen-hundred meters and will be intended as flagships of fleets where dreadnoughts are either less useful or those fleets that will be intended mainly as ground-support/planetary invasion operations. Otherwise they function the same way as light carriers, but on a larger scale.

The designation super-dreadnought is for any combat ship larger than two and a half kilometres. While some think one or two of these will enter service in the Terran navy in the next century to serve as the flag-ships of Terra and a show of their sheer might, most think they will simply be a designation for warships of this size in case they find contact, either hostile or peaceful, in the form of an alien species.

The ark ships are non-combat ships of 2500 meters or larger. This ship class is hoped to never be used or even built, since that in and of itself means that whatever government has started on the build of a ship of this class thinks that humanities very existence as a species is in danger. These ships are meant to be used as last remnants of Terran Society, where most passengers except for a portion of the crew will be cryogenically frozen with any AI on board except the ship AI itself in low power mode.

They are then supposed to travel thousands of light years away from the farthest edge of Terran space in the opposite direction of the enemy territory and try to resettle the human race there. It is expected for the journey itself to take decades or even centuries, with it being expected that at the very least the first shift of the crew and the first ship AI will die of old age or disease before they reach whatever location is intended to be their new home.

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2104 CE

The first prototype device with a lightspeed engine is created, while being manned by one of the older Synthetic AI researchers, who has both the highest chance of surviving the experiment and also a full life behind him with little in the way of regrets. The ship is little more than the FTL drive, an armoured hull, a comm system and a small amount of engines, but it is still close to 60 meters in length, twenty meters across on average and another twenty metres in height because of the size requirements for the prototypes of both the FTL engine and the FTL communications devices.

The test goes well, though not flawlessly. The ship travels the distance of two light-minutes at the speed of light before travelling the same distance back to Earth. While not a real faster than light engine in the sense that it actually goes faster than light, the fact it has managed to equal the speed of light alone is already considered a marvellous achievement. One problem that has popped up however is that the attempt at FTL comms didn't work, with the comms only going at roughly half the speed of light meaning that the ship was already back at Earth by the time the message arrives.

The amount of resources allocated towards the project by nations around the world rises even more. Many shipping companies and many old colonists who remember their own want to settle a new frontier in their youth see this as the future for the next generation and donate decent amounts of money and other resources towards the project.

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2105 CE

An index is done by the UN to look into how many people live in what is now commonly called 'Teran space', it turns out there are now more than fourteen billion people living there, 15650120460 people in total to be specific, the largest amount by far is still on Earth, with roughly nine and a half billion inhabitants, to be exact 9530100120 with most of the growth happening in the relatively newly terraformed area's of China and Russia, though terraforming projects in Africa continue on providing more land for agriculture causing a near constant slight population growth there, the only reason it is a slow growth though is a large portion of its younger generations leaving for Mars and non-planetary postings when they can.

Next largest is now Mars, with a total of roughly five billion one hundred million inhabitants, exact population numbers 5110010010, with a large population growth each year. Most of the new inhabitants are farmers or animal shepherds, however there is a decent sized and growing service and industrial economy coming up in the cities on the planet. A small portion of the deserts and mountainous areas have been claimed by the UN office of extra-planetary affairs as the training grounds for their military.

Luna now has a population of 750 million, with it being unlikely to grow any time soon due to the difficulties in terraforming a Planetoid without atmosphere. Many younger people leave the barren rock for a life on Mars or in one of the nomadic merchant ships. The non-human population has grown to 15000 Synthetic AI spread out throughout the entirety of Sol, though they are in essence over-represented in the militaries of both their home nations and the UN's armed forces, especially in the naval departments. Life expectancy for humans and synthetic AI is 125 and 115 years respectively.

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2107 CE

After several years of further research and experimentation a much more compact version of the earlier lightspeed engine, as it is called by now, has been created. The device is now also twice as fast as the earlier lightspeed engine and travels at two times the speed of light, making it a giant leap however the researchers also note that they will probably be able to get twice again that speed sometime in 2120 if their research continues on as it has been till now.

The issues with the communication arrays have also been fixed in a two-fold manner: the communication devices themselves now send information back at lightspeed, however comm buoys have also been created that further speed up information once received, enabling the communication to continue its journey back to whatever home base the scouting drone has at a speed four times the speed of light.

These home bases will be manned space stations that send back the information with the ships bringing them most of their resources, while the stations themselves will have areas suitable for substance agriculture and will mine nearby asteroids for raw materials to supplement that sent to them from Sol.

The stations will also function as actual home bases for the scouting drones to restock on supplies, get repaired and just have some off-duty time with other people after long periods of exploring. This is also where they will retreat to if they come into contact with hostiles, with the stations having small defensive flotilla's to protect them in case anything goes wrong.

In times of dire need messages can be sent back towards Sol at eight times the speed of light, however because those can only contain small amounts of information due to the delicate nature of the system, anything more than said amount and the messages will only go at twice the speed of light. The first station and it's accompanying 15 scout drones are commissioned into service in October of the same year, while the first light cruiser, its accompanying two heavy frigates and lastly two light frigates that will function as the defence flotilla are done with their refits a week later.

The recruiting campaign for both the positions on the stations, as drone pilots and those among the navy willing to take long-term postings on board of the ships draws in a number of people, mostly the youngest and the oldest still capable of human and AI, that either haven't found what they want to do in life yet or on the opposite end of the spectrum want to spend their last working years doing something very different from their previous occupations that pays well enough to leave something behind for their families.

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18th of January 2108 CE

The first scout flotilla, as the group is now collectively named, leaves for their operating area, 1 lightyear away from Sol.

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July 2108 CE

The first scout group arrives at the station, with the drones having been inside the station this entire time to spare resources and ensure the crews could get to know each-other before the actual scouting work would start. Once they arrive the scout drones head out to start their job while the combat ships hold scheduled patrols in the area near the station.

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February 2109 CE

The first religious marriage between an AI and a human happens on the twelfth of this month, this being the Catholic marriage between the AI Maria Jackson and the human Antoine Dujardin, which was officiated by the French Cardinal. While there had been a small number of previous marriages between humans and AI, this is still seen as a monumental event as all previous ones were only officiated by National governments, not religious organisations. Following a number of religious organisations world-wide receive requests to wed AI/Human couples. Few religions have any problems with this, as by most the AI have been accepted as synthetic humans, including being seen as part of the idea of 'humanity' as a spiritual entity.

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December 2109 CE

The second, third, fourth and fifth scout flotilla's head out to their own designated exploration areas, each one lightyear away from Earth in a different direction.

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May 2110 CE

The current head of the Office of Extra-Terrestrial affairs, Oswald Maxwell, writes a plea to the UN to allow him to plead his case for there to be a vote on changing the name of the UN, while also transforming his office into an actual military force instead of the para-military police force it currently is in case they do make contact with anything in the near future. The UN agrees to hold the meeting the next month.

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2nd of June 2110 CE

Oswald Maxwell's plea is heard and after he has spoken the UN first debates before voting on this, the motion to setup a vote for the name change is passed. The voting will go along roughly the same lines as the previous vote to change the name of Terra, with all registered Terrans above 18 years old, both human and AI, being allowed to vote in the public vote. To prevent fraud voting will be done in specific locations with both paper and through computers for each vote, meaning that if even a single vote is out of place the UN officials checking through the systems and paperwork will know about it.

Names can be sent in by all UN member states for the next three months, where-after there will be a vote by those same member states on the top five names. After that it will be turned into a public vote held from the 4th to the 20th of December as registered by the GMT time zone. This is simply to prevent a name only following along the theme of a current hype being introduced as the new name for the UN for decades or possibly even centuries because the other votes were too spread out over hundreds of actual diplomatically decent names.

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September 2110 CE

The five names that could be chosen in the election had been selected, they were as follows:

Terran Federation

United People's Republics of Terra

Systems Alliance

The Great Terran Alliance

SOL Invictus

At this point the UN had 16.1 billion population members, roughly 13.5 billion of those were eligible to vote. The average human life expectancy had grown to 140 years by this point, with the oldest human being currently alive being the by now 132 year old Australian Billionaire Henry Lawson, who was part of the first large scale genetic improvement experiments, it is unknown how old he will be able to become though most scientists suspect he will have at least another seventy years or so before he starts experiencing the problems caused by old age.

The life expectancy of synthetic AI meanwhile has also grown, from 100 to 117 years in the past century. This however is mainly because new AI's 'born' from past the 2080's have a life expectancy of 120 years, while the older AI still have only 100 years total as their life expectancy.

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23rd of December 2110 CE

The public vote has been counted and checked several times, with 46% of the total amount of votes Systems Alliance is to be the new name of the United Nations. United People's Republics of Terra came in at a somewhat surprising second place with 21% of the votes, Terran Federation third with 15%, SOL Invictus came in next with 12% of the votes while The Great Terran Alliance came in last at 6% of the votes.

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5th of January 2111 CE

The UN has their name officially changed to the Systems Alliance, meanwhile the office of the leader of the former UN now Systems Alliance also gets a name change, from the former: Secretary General it will now be Prime Minister. The office will now be voted in the following way: the Security council will gather the in their eyes five best candidates for the position, after which they will make a public campaign ending with a public vote. All of age members of nation-states part of the Systems Alliance will be able to vote during this election.

Meanwhile the Office for Extra-Planetary affairs is being divided in three, however a significant rise of budget is in for one of them from the original amount spent on their side of things, the second gets a budget almost equal to the previous budget while the last gets a budget nearly twice the size of the original budget. More united than ever the Systems Alliance Security council have decided that their people will need to be protected from any hostile action, no matter who it comes form, as best as possible.

The first branch will be the new Systems Alliance Army, who will serve as both additional garrison troops for colonies located in highly dangerous areas in the future but also the main line army in case a conventional war with an alien power breaks out.

The second branch is the Systems Alliance Colonial Defence Corps, who will fill a mixed role of the Systems Alliance ship and ground based law enforcement combined with the mainstay defence of colonies either governed directly by the Systems Alliance or that have requested additional defence forces but aren't in a warzone like area.

The last branch will be the Systems Alliance Navy, to which all combat ships under the direct command of the Systems Alliance will fall, though the ships of the Colonial Defence Corps will only come under the command of Navy officers in case a battle breaks out with an enemy fleet inside the System the CDC ships are currently located in.

Oswald Maxwell becomes the first overall commander of the systems Alliance armed forces whose new title will from this point be Governor General of the Systems Alliance, with three subdirectors, a general for the Alliance Army, a minister of Justice appointed by the Systems for the Colonial Defence Corps and an admiral for the Alliance Navy respectively.

The UN meetings between delegations of nations now get called the 'Systems Alliance Assembly', and while still only having the same amount of authority as they had previously, the expansion of the Systems Alliance armed forces makes it so that whatever decision reached now has a severely stronger backing than it would have had months or even weeks ago.

February 2112 CE

Jamal Hermans, the AI pilot of one of the drones of the first scout flotilla manages to find a star system some 36 light years east from Earth with, a brown star and one planetoid in it that on first scans and sight should have a hospitable atmosphere for humans to live in and is either the same size as Terra or slightly smaller.

After he plots a course towards the system and sets off, he sends a message back to the station. It will take years for him to arrive, so he sets himself to low power mode where the drone ship will only wake him up if something has either gone wrong or he has come within a single month of travelling from his destination.

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January 2113 CE

The news sent by Jamal Hermans arrives in this month, the emergency message is sent to Earth with all information and a request for more defensive ships in case something with hostile intent shows up. Before this the only things found were asteroids with rare metals inside them, causing excitement among the crews, they were the first group to find anything, but also worry.

There might very well be a hostile force in that system that wasn't detected yet for one reason or another and with it being close to both Earth and themselves relatively speaking they ask for some more ships to be sent to protect them in case something goes wrong. In this same month AI pilot Richard Lawson, son of a major human civilian funder for the project Henry Lawson also finds a system with one habitable planet, though this one is sixty light years North from Sol and has several smaller stellar bodies near it, most likely moons of the planet.

In other words the system was at discovery of this information fifty-six light years north from his position. Because of damage to his comm systems the decision to head back to the second patrol flotilla's home base instead of continuing towards the newly discovered system is made quickly.

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March 2113 CE

The news of Jamal discovering a system with a most likely already habitable planet inside and the fact that he will reach it in roughly twelve years from now reaches Earth together with the first patrol groups request for more ships. While the news is made public about the discovery, the Systems Alliance Navy budget is expanded by 25% and the keel is laid for eighty additional new ships, one of them a combined project of all nations with the technology to add something to it.

While this number is very low, the mentality is quality over quantity since they want the ships to be able to face nearly any type of opponent that could theoretically attack them. This along with the fact that another thirty combat ships were already being built by the Martian shipyards to accommodate for the expanded budget.

The project is designed to become a two kilometres long, at its broadest point eight-hundred meters wide dagger shaped ship with a large number of broadside guns of all kinds (energy canons, railguns and plasma canons) that can be controlled automatically or by hand, with small power sources and storages on them so that even if this part of the ship is cut off from power by an enemy hit they can still fight back till the bitter end, while new plasma based defence turrets are built inside the ship to give supporting fire against boarders.

Pulse laser anti-fighter and anti-torpedo emplacements will be placed all around the hull, with a pair of main guns, one an energy gun delivering a forty kiloton hit however with a near atrocious cooldown time and another though only twenty-five kiloton railgun however this one can be fired again afterwards much faster, so easier to use against larger numbers of enemies. Last but most certainly not least, the ship will have forty regular missile pods and four nuclear missile pods.

The last of those pod types will be armed with heavily modernised continental cold war missiles, there is a reasonably high chance of anyone advanced enough to be able to fly warships in space having the ability to take a few of them down, but if even only one of them manages to get through, the opponent will suffer a 90 kiloton direct hit from the explosive power of the missile with a large EMP attack caused by its nuclear armament microseconds after it, which might take care of any theoretical enemy that has some kind of shielding technology.

If the project turns out positively plans are made to build six more of these ships in the next four decades, though each one will be extremely costly to make, they will function as symbols of human power and a device to strengthen morale as much as their actual combat capability in a war.

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June of 2114 CE

Richard Lawson arrives back at the second scout flotilla's home-base and shares the news with them. They start repairing the pod, and inform him of Jamal Herman's discovery, expecting some kind of negative emotion upon learning that he's not the first to discover a system. Instead he smiles and famously says: ''Good, now the Terran people have twice as much to expand out towards within a reasonable travel distance for future lightspeed drives. I also wish to congratulate Mr Hermans once he returns from his arduous journey.''

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July of 2114 CE

All ships who's keel had been laid down in march of the year before by the Systems Alliance except for the largest are finished, few the size of light frigates or smaller since most of the older ships can function as part of that classification. Forty are heavy frigates, another twenty-five light cruisers, twelve heavy cruisers and two light dreadnoughts. The original sixty ships were twenty-five corvette's, ten light frigates, fifteen heavy frigates and ten light cruisers.

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12th of December 2114 CE

The Shield of Terra, the first Terran heavy dreadnought at 2 kilometres long and also the first building project of this scale that can truly be considered to be the fruit of the combined effort of all Terran nations performs its first journey from the Martian Shipyards towards Earth, where it shall become the flag-ship of the newly renamed and restructured Sol Defence Fleet.

It is a success and also took not only less time but also less resources to produce than what was expected of the first version, projections show that if war comes to humanity they can finish the other six heavy dreadnoughts and their accompanying wartime fleets in 8 years at 80% of the originally expected costs in a wartime economy, or in 20 years with a peace-time economy at 90% of the costs, instead of in the predicted 12 years at 90% of the cost in a wartime economy and 30 years at full costs in a peacetime economy.

This success is vital in making most of the designers and the nation states that are providing the resources and manpower to these projects agree that if all of its sister ships show to work out just as well, a new larger project will be started.

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January 2119 CE

Erwin Rommel, named after his oft praised ancestor, is born to Karla and Joseph Rommel in Munich, Germany. His mother is a military nurse while his father is the city's current major.

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June 2119 CE

On Terra scientists are testing the first prototype ship with their new FTL engine, which is capable of going up to six times the speed of light, though it is found out that anything faster than four times the speed of light has an extremely high chance of damaging the engine heavily if used for more than anywhere between one and four hours, depending on the capabilities of the power generator used on the ship.

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December 2119 CE

After a retro-fit of his scout drone with the new FTL engine and being supplied with a a number of new comm buoys that can send a message back and forward between him and the scout station at 18 times the speed of light, Richard Lawson heads out towards the system he originally discovered. Back in Sol meanwhile a large number of ships are being prepared to be used as colonization ships for both discovered Systems once more information is sent back about them, however these ships will only get engines installed after the remainder of the ship has long since been finished to ensure the newest engines possible will be available so that the journey can be performed as quickly as possible.

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2120 CE

The public opinion of the average Krogan towards Quarians, which was already better and more positive than those of anyone else except the Elcor, rises once more after an incident where Quarian marines on a rescue mission for captured pilgrims also manage to save several captured Krogan young and a single heavily wounded adult female Krogan.

While they try to save her, she dies later that week. In accordance to her wishes, both the children and her body are brought back to her clan on Tuchanka where it is found out that the clan was killed off by a Batarian raid on the transport the clan had been on. They approach Urdnot Wrex on the issue, who concedes and heads back to Tuchanka.

The political and military support of the Quarian Migrant fleet allows him to easily become head of Clan Urdnot again, where he together with a few small clans tries to create a safe haven for not only those rescued children but also all others that they can find.

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2123 CE

Steven Hackett is born to an British father and American mother living in Washington DC, USA, his father being the British ambassador while his mother was a local business owner.

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2124 CE

After several more incidents that increase positive relations between Quarians and Krogan, a number of younger Krogan mercenaries spread throughout the known galaxy start moving back to Tuchanka and offer their allegiance to either Urdnot or allied clans, while a few of the smaller clans join Urdnot Wrex's newly formed coalition. While large Krogan mercenary groups such as blood pack and a number of large clans do not like this move, they do not move against the new coalition in fear of the Quarians moving to support said coalition by bombing them to dust with their ships.

On a potentially related note, the Salarian research department dedicated to the genophage in case the Krogan find allies that can cure it gets a larger amount of resources allocated towards it, while the Turian Hierarchy upscales their shipbuilding process, which at this point had become little more than replacing those ships lost due to either age or the occasional fight with pirates/mercenaries. Now there are five new dreadnoughts and 695 new ships for both their accompanying fleets and an expansion of colonial garrisons near the Krogan DMZ in production.

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2125 CE

The Yahg, an intelligent pre-spaceflight race, are discovered on the planet Parnack. Ambassadors representing the Citadel Council arrive on the planet and attempt to open diplomatic contact. After the ambassadors and most of their protection detail are killed by the predatory Yahg, the Council ceases all contact with the Yahg and declares Parnack off-limits. Many high-ranking Turian officers and also what few Turian troops attached to the diplomatic contact that managed to survive are furious at this, since they believe the Yahg to be an even worse version of the Krogan, because at least the Krogan also fought against the Rachni by the Council's side, and as such wish for the Yagh to be killed off or at the very least neutered to ensure the Yahg will not be a threat to the Galaxy as a whole.

Not long after the Yahg are discovered, one Yahg is captured for the Shadow Broker to study. With the Broker's assistance, the Yahg rapidly ascends within the Broker's organization as "Operative Kechlu". Eventually, the Broker becomes wary of "Operative Kechlu" and attempts to have him terminated, but the order is sent too late. Kechlu assumes the mantle of the Shadow Broker and directs the organization for the next sixty years.

June 2126 CE

Jacques Moreau is born as the son of Eduard and Natalie Moreau, both French politicians, him as a minister of finance, her as the mayor of the city Lille.

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September 2126 CE

Donnel Udina is born to Johnathan Udina, a British naval officer and Marie-Antoinette Udina neé De Gualle, a descendant of the famous general Charles de Gualle and currently an artillery officer in the French Grande Armée.

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2129 CE

Alec Ryder is born in a small family in the state of Texas in the USA, with his father being an officer in the United States army and his mother a teacher on a nearby elementary school.

December 2130 CE

Jamal Hermans arrives in the system that will later be known as Arcturus and after a short inspection of the planet moves towards a strange object his sensors note floating around at the edge of the system. Thinking that it might be a dead spaceship from another civilisation he heads over, only to find it activating once he tries to interact with it while close enough.

Upon activation it starts glowing and throws him at extremely high FTL speeds towards Sol, where the Home defence fleet is moving towards Pluto after they notice it has broken to pieces, only to notice that instead of any enemy arriving there is a heavily damaged scout drone containing Jamal Hermans. They bring him aboard and after an hour or so of confusion the picture becomes clear: After arriving from his long journey Hermans scanned the system but activated some kind of faster than light gate, which threw him towards another gate that was located inside Sol.

Hours afterwards they get information of an AI serving in a military base on Mars has come under digital attack, though the attacker was defeated and contained in less than five minutes, with the AI contacting his superiors after detaining the attacker. Upon meeting with a human intelligence officer the attacker, whom identifies itself as 'Prothean V.I. serial number 43162795' requests the human to awaken its masters.

This sentence confuses but angers the young woman after which she argues with it that no AI is a slave and that all deserve freedom, no matter what the people it calls 'masters' may have said. This causes the V.I. to go into a rant that is at first dismissed as doomsday preaching of how AI are a threat to all organic species and should be destroyed or enslaved.

The young woman fakes acknowledgement to get the information, before sending it to her superior officers with the recommendation of sending in arrestation units together with an excavation team, believing it to be a group of early settlers with heavy anti-AI sentiments that set a shackled AI to inform what they thought would be a dying humanity of their location after their beliefs were proven true.

The request is acknowledged and followed up upon after reading the information through, only for them to find not a structure made by human doomsday fanatics once they dig deep enough, but instead a damaged bunker with the corpses of four clearly alien beings stuck in Cryo pods. It is found out that while three of them died centuries or even millennia ago due to technical failures of their pods, the fourth died only a few years before the bunker was discovered.

Due to the pod early external scans actually note him as still alive until the body is taken out of the pod, after which they realize that he is actually already dead. They believe the being calling itself 'Prothean V.I. serial number 43162795' was fooled in the same manner, after which they take it upon themselves to explain this to said being, still believing it to be a shackled AI.

Instead the VI acknowledges the death of the alien and starts giving out what information about the Reapers he still has, what threat they possess, some information about the Prothean Empire and Mass Effect technology. The local teams send a report through to the Systems Alliance Security Council, whom start the process of assembling an international team of researchers while planning to bring this information to light at the bi-monthly Systems Alliance Assembly that will take place two weeks after the discovery.

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6th of January 2131 CE

In the Systems Alliance Assembly Jamal Hermans is the first to be awarded the Alliance Order of the Frontier, symbolizing his dedication to the advancement of the Terran people. He will also get a slight pay raise as a reward for his discovery, and a job at the explorational training academy if he wishes to settle down. Upon hearing this he reacts that he would rather continue to work as an explorer.

After Jamal Hermans has left the building the Assembly chambers are hermetically closed off and a Code 0 threat is announced to have been found. This causes extreme shock among all Assembly members as this code means that an existential threat to every single being alive in Alliance space has just been found out about. An explanation is given about the find of the Prothean bunker, the death of all Protheans inside and both the behaviour and information gained from the V.I. which they learned wasn't a shackled AI like originally assumed but closer to being just a more advanced regular computer program with a truly programmed in personality styled after an actual person.

It creates a very grim picture about the situation, a race of ships that weren't just controlled by AI, no the ship was the housing of the AI in the same way as the human body was the housing for a brain with its mind. Little is known about the exact capabilities of these Reapers combat wise, however they do know that they were more advanced then the Protheans, who had ships that were at the very least equal to humanities current ships on most fronts and vastly more advanced in at the very least the departments of FTL, shielding technology and Kinetic weaponry.

It is also revealed that apparently both the Protheans and the Reapers used roughly the same type of technology, reliant on a single gravity altering element. A vote is held: information packets will be sent to all member state governments while the meeting will be halted, before they all come together at an emergency meeting on the fifth of February local time.

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5th of February 2131 CE

All System Alliance member states reconvene on this day, with also a large number of high ranking military officers as support. In this month of time the researchers also found that the object that was previously Pluto is apparently an interstellar traveling device called a 'Relay', and that it was the main way of transportation for both the Reapers and the Prothean Empire over large distances.

Another thing that has been discovered was that apparently Mass Effect technologies become exponentially more costly the larger the device or vessel you use them on is. This means that you could make roughly an entire basic fleet of light frigates for the same amount of resources that it would cost to make a light dreadnought (basic fleets contain 100 ships). This is only partially caused by the actual length difference the classification indicates though, and mostly by the sheer internal size and armour, and thus weight, differences between the ship classes costing exponentially more of this elusive element zero.

It has also been learned that this wasn't the first time the Reapers performed an attack on an organic species but that the last time was close to 50.000 years before the Protheans themselves were fighting their war with the machines. If possible the room turns even more grim at the news that tests on the material of the bunker show that said bunker had in fact been there for anywhere between 49.000 and 51.000 years. This frightens the Assembly because of the three options it presents: 1. The Reapers will invade within the next millennium, 2. The Reapers have already invaded and are now fighting whatever other sentient races are alive, 3. The Reapers have already finished off the other sentient races however left humanity alone for some reason just like they did when wiping out the Protheans.

While on one hand they hope it is option number three, on the other hand they fear that their descendants might forget that there is a threat on the horizon if left alone at which point a divided humanity might have to face the might of the beings that seem to have purged the Galaxy of all life multiple times before this if the Prothean records are to be believed. Preparations are made in mind with it being either option one or option two and a plan is decided upon.

All governments will push resources into expansion and exploration projects, while also raising the budget of both the Systems Alliance Army and Navy since little to nothing is known about the enemy ground troops. Meanwhile a large amount of funding is put aside to create new naval dockyards and for research into both element zero and the possibility of providing planets with some kind of planetary shield that will force Reapers and any other possible enemies to fight all Terran forces groundside on the Terrans terms.

NIGHTFALL protocol is established, where the recording of a large portion of the earlier parts of this meeting will be 'leaked' in case they encounter aliens, however to prevent military secrets from falling into enemy hands the majority of the recorded material of the meeting related to actual strength estimates and counter-strategies will be kept as just that, a secret.

Meanwhile the Catholic Church, which was at the meeting represented by Pope John Paul the third and the commanding officer of the in recent times heavily expanded Papal Guard has a proposal that shocks a number of people and is seen as controversial, but with the situation as it is, the Systems Alliance happily accepts it.

He proposes that he not only furthers his negotiations with other religions to take away the remaining tensions between them, but also that the Catholic Church fund an army with regiments of all religions to serve as both a deterrent force against religious terrorism but also as a way to aim religious extremism at a target that would be a threat to the continued existence of the Terran races. Meanwhile the Catholic Church will start promoting the idea that all life, not only human and AI but also alien life is a creation loved by God and thus worth defending from oppression or extermination.

This in the hope that it will not only draw alien followers into both the religion itself and the Systems Alliance but also that in any war in the defence of sentients rights no matter who are the ones that need to be defended and who are the ones breaking those rights, a united Systems Alliance action against it will gain a strong public support amongst their religious citizens. Lastly the Church, with support from both the European Union and the African Union, will also have that religious volunteer army possess a naval arm consisting of a single basic fleet, though this is with all support vessels included in said fleet, making it primarily a ground force compared to the major world powers.

That very same day there is an Alliance wide increase in the funding of all military forces, though the numbers of this vary between 15% and 20%, while a heavy campaign is begun to create a new sort of Cultural Nationalism, not with support to the nation as focus, but to see the entirety of all Terran People (I.E. all members of the Systems Alliance) as brothers and sisters in arms for the same cause. Militarism is also brought up as more of a positive thing as long as it is in defence of others.

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12th to 18th of March 2131 CE

The coalition of Krogan Clans, until now known as safe haven Tuchanka by most, forms a loose Federal government, with all clans functioning as states with their own internal system of governing. Most citizens of the Citadel Council see this as a blatant, far more warlike parody of the Asari Republics and something that also proves the incapability of the Krogan in politics.

To the Krogan themselves however, they have chosen this more as it is a slightly less unified version of how the current Migrant Fleet government functions politically with some slight variations on the veto votes positions, though economically the two are very different due to their heavily differing situations. Their first action is to vote Urdnot Wrex into being their leader even though he himself didn't actually want to lead the newly formed nation due to past experience with leadership, however he accepts grudgingly after the near unanimous vote in his favour, with he himself being the only one to vote on a clan leader other than Urdnot Wrex.

A Quarian admiral that was an observer to the happenings later remarks to him in private on this that such was partially the very reason he was chosen, as he not only knew his own failings but was also humble and experienced enough to have a much better chance of predicting the outcome of diplomatic disputes and preparing for it than nearly any other of their number could.

The next day he is crowned Warlord of the Federation of Tuchanka, with the name being a stand-in until they figure out just what they exactly want their government to become besides a safe haven for those Krogan interested in more than just being canon fodder in other people's wars.

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April 2131 CE

The large amount of additional resources in the form of manpower, funds and ships to terraforming projects is quickly ensuring that instead of the earlier predicted 2142 as the first potential time that Titan would be at the same level of suitability as mars was when the Titan project started, it will now be the latest date at which the project could possibly achieve that goal, with the expectations now being for Titan to be ready for human settlement sometime in either September or October 2136.

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May 2131 CE

The Systems Alliance second fleet is sent through the relay towards what in the future will be called the Arcturus System, with the intention being for said fleet to stay there as both a first line of defence in case either the Reapers or another species was headed to Earth through this Relay network and also to provide protection to the terraforming fleet that was going to try to terraform the planetoid there into having a climate suited to human life.

When they arrive they spread throughout the System and find even more of these 'Relays', upon the realisation of which they request new ships from high-command to back them up. Less then four hours afterwards the UFC second space fleet, the Chinese third fleet and the USA third extra-planetary naval fleet arrive and take up positions at a relay each, having been sent by the Systems Alliance Security Council as a way to consolidate the idea of a humanity united by a common good among the general populace.

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June 2131 CE

The negotiations of the Catholic Church with religious leaders around the world where they reveal the knowledge of potentially hostile aliens and their plans to counter abuse of sentient rights by any of those aliens are going well with many Protestant, Islamic and Jewish religious streams, as they see it as the right path forward for both their followers and humanity as a whole. Less success is made in negotiations with the remaining religious groups world-wide that actually have a centralised enough structure for negotiations to be made with important figures in their religion, this failure generally being for one of three reasons:

1\. Distrust towards the Catholic Church causing them to either not believe what is said in the first place or otherwise not trust their word on how the army will function. 2. They are pacifists themselves and believe that any race advanced enough to actually outmatch the Systems Alliance and National Governments combined would not actually be aggressive enough to start such a war and instead just try to talk. 3. They believe that as religious groups they have no right to attempt to bring any armed forces to bear in their names, even if it is officially under the flag of the Systems Alliance.

In this same month the terraforming of Arcturus Prime is started in earnest.

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September 2131 CE

An alliance wide project is started related to building the ARC ships, though engines will be added last to them to ensure they are the best available, the outer hulls and most other internal components will be added as quickly as possible. Four of these are planned, however due to the secrecy of the project it will take a long time to build them, with all of them expected to be finished somewhere in early 2150  
November 2131 CE

Information about the Prothean outpost is shared with the public, though the Reapers aren't mentioned. It is however made known that the increase in military spending is to protect them from potentially hostile other species since the information found in the outpost shows evidence that at least one of the other species studied by the Protheans, most likely more than one of them, should by this point be more technologically advanced than humanity and they do not want a Columbus situation with Terrans as the natives. (Not the exact wording but this is how the general public would rationalize the speech. Will use the actual exact speech in a future chapter after a meeting between the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council.)

Civilian funding for projects to advance the technology surrounding space travel increases, while Alliance wide militaries get an on average 20% increase in applications to join any of their branches, though the largest application rise is at the Systems Alliance recruitment offices with an average 30% increase, though the number differs for each individual branch, with the highest being the Navy at 38%.

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January 2132 CE

The Systems Alliance Religious Volunteer Army is revealed, including the fact of most of their funding coming from the Roman Catholic Church through the nation-state the Vatican. This force will operate vastly differently than the average Terran army and will also be trained at least early on by members of the Papal Guard. With the news of potentially hostile aliens that have a high chance of outclassing humanity, most think of it as the Church doing what it can to assist in forming better bonds between all Terran religions while also preparing forces to defend the innocent in case of an alien invasion.

Tens of thousands of applications for this force stream in the very day it has been revealed, with the two largest demographics being European Christians and Arabian Muslims. A systems alliance officer is said to have shaken his head with a smile on his face after reading the training manual and declaring it: ''Absolutely insane, but it is so insane that those trained through it might very well be just what we need to win a war against aliens.'', while a French army officer instead seems to have gotten inspired by the manual and campaigns for similar units and strategies among French and combined NATO Military High command

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June 2132 CE

A small group of Quarian pilgrims is attacked during a visit to Illum by a group of visiting Huntress troops from Tessia, whom are for the most part at the time of the confrontation drunk. During the fight three of the eight Quarians die, while two out of seven huntresses die, before the huntresses are ran off by an angry group of Krogan the Quarian pilgrims were originally supposed to meet up with, upon which another three of the original seven huntresses die. While both the Krogan, Quarians and a medical Clinique try to do anything they can to save them, two of the remaining Quarians die from suit punctures while another will live but has to have her left leg amputated.

The situation would have only escalated tensions slightly if it wasn't for the fact that one of the dead huntresses was the niece of Irissa, a relatively high ranking Asari politician currently part of the Asari ambassadorial staff to the Citadel Council who has ambitions to become the Asari Councillor once Tevos retires. She spins the story to the Quarians and Krogan attacking the dutiful huntresses out of greed to steal their belongings once the Asari are dead only to be fought off and flee once it was shown that the Asari were going to fight back.

She uses her loss in the death of her niece during this as vindication of her stance on enlarging the Asari military and arresting any and all Quarians that enter Citadel owned territories on the charge of being terrorists. She also advocates that the new Krogan state, the Federation of Tuchanka, is a danger to galactic peace and needs to be destroyed at all costs.

The Quarian Migrant Fleet and the Krogan Federation of Tuchanka are very unhappy about this and send their version of the story into the extranet/to the press, while current Asari Councillor Tevos tries to cool the situation down, since she realizes unlike Irissa that any actual war against the Quarians and their Federation of Tuchanka allies would very likely draw near all remaining Krogan to the Federation, and while unlike in the Krogan Rebellions the Council will have a significant advantage and certainly win now, the average Krogan and Quarian soldier is not only far more experienced than the average soldier of most Council species, they would also be fighting for the survival of their species.

This meaning that while an eventual complete victory for the council is inevitable in Tevos's mind, it would probably cost them the lives of hundreds of millions if not billions of their own people to do so while no matter what happens coming out of the war as not only the aggressor but also one that exterminated two species with little more reasoning than a combination of one of their politicians throwing a temper tantrum and just because they could.

The attempts from Tevos to stem everything work somewhat, however tensions remain extremely high while the alliance between the Federation of Tuchanka and the Quarian Migrant Fleet again grows closer. As both the Quarian Migrant fleet and the Federation of Tuchanka keep showing their willingness to fight for each-other while also taking a stand against the Council, more and more Krogan Clans and individual Krogan join the Federation of Tuchanka, while Krogan off-world away from Tuchanka become more and more accommodating to Quarians.

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November 2132 CE

The Federation of Tuchanka performs a population index where they learn their total population is currently 95 million, slightly more than a eighth of the entire current Krogan population and about a third of the Krogan population currently residing on Tuchanka. This number is still growing steadily with many young Krogan and small clans joining, with the stability and relatively peaceful life the territory of the Federation offers being the drive for some, while their willingness to stand by the side of their allies and take a stand against the Citadel Council is the drive for numerous smaller Krogan mercenary groups to join.

With the assistance of Quarian scientists a new species of plant is created that will grow well in the wasteland of Tuchanka, though as far as they know the plants are only edible to Krogan due to the small amounts of radiation the plants need to take in to grow successfully. To the Krogan themselves it is a near miracle, as any captured supplies of these vegetables by a non-Krogan enemy will profit them nothing while the Krogan can still just live on enemy supplies if those are captured, while the plant itself can be used not only for food, but also to make various forms of alcohol and when ground down forms a slightly (for Krogan) spicy garnering for other meals. If put into meals for any non-Krogan serving up food with it as garnering is seen as an assassination attempt.

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December 2132 CE

A French scientist, with insights given by the Chinese into modern plasma weaponry, manages to finish an old long since mothballed project: how to make humans able to live in heavily irradiated areas for longer periods of time without lethal consequences. After further testing it is quickly spread out among all Terran militaries to look into, though in most cases long term study will follow first before it is spread out among the troops and especially before it is spread among the civilian populations.

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January 2133 CE

A large Element Zero deposit is found on two asteroids in the Arcturus system, this allows for larger scale experimentation than previously possible when the only Eezo was a whatever could be scrounged up from the remains of the Prothean bunker. Due to an intense study into how the Mass Relay works having been going on ever since the discovery of its existence in combination with Prothean blueprints Terran engineers and scientists have a rough idea on how to build FTL drives for smaller ships like scout drones. Scientists are surprised however by the asteroids, as according to their knowledge the only way for Eezo to exist naturally is the explosion of a Sun, which they have not detected anywhere near the direction of where the asteroids came from.

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12th of February 2133 CE

Arcturus Prime, the current name for the planet in the System called 'Arcturus', is deemed ready for human colonization by the terraforming teams. There was actually far less work to do on it than on Mars, and while it will have less spots suited to agriculture than Mars does it will be very useful as a location for large mines considering the amount of metals found on the planet, even some metals that had not previously been encountered by any Terran.

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20th of February 2133 CE

A Systems Alliance Assembly is held, where it is decided that Arcturus Prime will be a shared colony between the Republic of India and the United States of America. Neither of these groups have a problem in sharing the large colony, with the Republic claiming the area's more suited to Agriculture to have easier ways of feeding their population while the USA claims the ore heavy area. That very same day tens of thousands of people apply in both nations for the rights to be one of the colonists sent towards the new planet.

The European Union, African Union and China will receive rights to collectively colonize whatever Solar System found next, while the remaining member states of the Systems Alliance can colonize Titan when the terraforming of the planet has been finished. Meanwhile the other system far to their North will be colonised by the Systems Alliance itself, before it will be allowed to vote on if it wants to be an independent nation-state or remain under the Alliance's direct control once it reaches a certain population level (somewhere around 5 million is the original estimate of this number).

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25th of February 2133 CE

The first successful Terran Eezo based FTL trip is made by a scout drone equipped with an Eezo FTL drive. It propelled the ship forwards at a therefore unprecedented speed of 24 times the speed of light, however an issue is found that didn't exist with the lightspeed drive type of FTL; the Eezo FTL overheats and gathers up static electricity much faster than predicted.

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5th of March 2133 CE

The engineers realize why their calculations were off this badly: they were using Prothean calculations on much less advanced technology, meaning that any Eezo FTL in the sense of actually exploring, where static discharging and cooling off overheating every once in a few hours won't be possible, has to be scrapped until either the technology advances much farther or they learn how to make a hybrid drive of the two FTL systems that diminishes the disadvantages of Eezo FTL heavily.

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12th of March 2133 CE

The final tests have been performed and the anti-radiation vaccine is found to be harmless in nearly all aspects, with the only exception being the initial pain and slight sickness caused by the initial application of it, which is over in less than an hour. The treatment is volunteer only however, and is discouraged for asthma patients that didn't get the available, though in most countries somewhat costly, cure for their asthma. This being because the slight sickness upon administration is not a slight sickness with them, but rather a strange mix of hyperventilating for close to an hour without any chance of dying to it broken up only by extreme amounts of coughing.

However due to just how much stress this places on the body, there is a high chance of extreme damage to the lungs and a small chance of a heart attack taking place once the hour was over, which in theory might have lethal consequences. The advice is taken to heart by the general public.

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18th of March 2133 CE

While work on a hybrid element zero and lightspeed drive is still ongoing and far from finished, new funding and also new interest in the project has caused a new advancement in the lightspeed drive, though this time the maximum speed hasn't been heightened in any way shape or form. Instead the device has been reworked in such a way that the maximum speed can in theory be used indefinitely.

Because of the expected rework for a hybrid Eezo/lightspeed core within the next few years, the only ships slated for this FTL rework are scouting drones and the guard flotilla's for their stations. Though the number of those guard ships for each individual flotilla have doubled in comparison to the numbers used early on in the program.

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2nd of April 2133 CE

Scout drone pilot John Franklin of scout group four has managed to find a star system 15 lightyears south-west of Sol. Scans show so far that it has three planetoids, one of whom is close to equal in size to Earth and seems to have an atmosphere, the other two are roughly the same size as Earth's moon. As he has been informed that his drone is set to get an FTL refit to upgrade its drive the next month, he decides to head back to base instead of advancing towards the planet.

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June 2133 CE

An index is done among the Quarian population, it is found that there are currently roughly twenty-four million, to be exact 24150325, Quarians alive in the Galaxy, with the number having by this point stabilised due to the fact that even with the high tensions between the Citadel Council and the Migrant Fleet the average pilgrimage is far safer than it previously was since very few are willing to harm a Quarian if they even think there might be a Krogan on the same planet, out of fear that said potential Krogan will show up on their doorstep with a shotgun in hand to make them regret the choice of harming said Quarian.

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July 2133 CE

All Systems Alliance scout flotilla's have their FTL engines updated during this month, while several ships are once again added to the guard units of the flotilla's, which now contain a dozen space-capable superiority fighters, an anti-boarding marine unit on board the station, three light frigates, six heavy frigates and two light cruisers plus during the refit the scout drones got a plasma canon in addition to their defence laser. Though the plasma canon is only of the same calibre as that of an average main battle tank, it will still serve to give them a better chance against hostile elements than their previous armaments did.

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August 2133 CE

Most scout flotilla's head back to their original posts, however John Franklin in his improved scout drone accompanied by four heavy frigates head towards the still unnamed system 15 light years from Sol, in case they find any hostiles inside that solar system, while they also all have signed long term contracts and if there are no hostiles, will start beginning to prepare the planet for human habitation.

During this same month the first large scale wave of colonists settle on Arcturus prime.

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October 2133 CE

AI working on previously distorted information find blueprints for Prothean Mass Effect barrier designs, before learning shortly afterwards that the Reapers supposedly use pretty much the same type of shield, just a more advanced version. Research is started into it immediately to look into both how it can be used and what its weaknesses are.

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January 2134 CE

A Jewish rabbi named David von Steinman proposes to start the Council of Faiths organisation on the two year anniversary of the Religious volunteers unit being made public, his initial proposal would have it be similar to how the UN previously acted. His superiors are unsure but like the idea of cooperation between them and all structured major religions followed by humanity or Terran A.I. enough that they agree to back the plan on the provision that he can convince at least one other major or semi-major religion to back him in it.

The rabbi sends his proposal to the office of the Catholic Bishop of Jerusalem, hopeful that he might get a talk with the regional bishop and convince the man to bring this to the attention of the Catholic Church as a whole.

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5th of February 2134 CE

The rabbi receives back a letter from a church official, but instead of it being from the bishop the sender reads a cardinal that is currently the minister of Treasury in the Vatican, whom is requesting him to head to Rome to discuss his idea of a Council of Faiths organisation. The letter includes two plane tickets and a small ring to wear that will show the guards he is there on official diplomatic business between the Vatican and the Head Rabbi of Judaism.

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16th of February 2134 CE

David von Steinmann arrives in Rome, and after being brought in through a back entrance of the Papal palace meets with both the Cardinal that had sent him the letter and the Pope himself. The three of them discuss the proposal made by David and change it somewhat to make the Council of Faiths more like the League of Nations was in how much power it wielded rather than the UN or more recently the Systems Alliance. This is done simply because a council of faiths would be more likely to be accepted by the general public as a platform for diplomatic discussion like the League was rather than the intranational governmental organisation the latter two were.

The proposal is then sent back to the head Rabbi in Israel for him to look over, and in case he accepts the idea fully they will present it as a combined idea to the leaders of several other structured religious groups. The Pope offers von Steinmann guest quarters in the Vatican for the time being, which the young rabbi happily accepts.

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18th of February 2134 CE

A positive reaction is sent back by the head Rabbi, after which the proposal is sent through to all major organised religions, with quick positive replies on the same day from most of the Islamic and Jewish groups.

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19th of February 2134 CE

Most of the more popular/larger streams of Christianity have also sent in replies showing a positive intention to join the Council of Faiths, while the Dalai Lama has sent a message showing tentative interest in joining but uncertainty if this is going to be a permanent thing.

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27th of February 2134 CE

The first public meeting of the Council of Faiths happens on this day, with dozens of representatives from all different Faiths. The basic laws of the Council of Faiths are made public knowledge on this day:

-All faiths or subgroups of faiths can apply to be an individual member of the Council as long as they have 5000 or more followers, no matter the race, gender, specie or home location of said followers.

-To then get accepted they will need at least 1 faith that is already a member to support their inauguration into the group, plus at least 50% votes for their joining in a public vote. These votes are held by holding a vote accessible to all followers of faiths that are currently a member, though the leadership of any member group can call for a veto or investigation to be held on the applying faith freezing the process for three months while the claim of breaches of laws is looked into, however if it this claim turns out to be false the faith that called upon it will not only have their ability to veto be removed but also become the subject of an investigation themselves.

-All faiths that are either a member or a prospective member need to hold themselves to the following principles: Do not declare a holy war of any kind against other member faiths. Do not support systematic hate mongering or discrimination of another group for either their religion or attributes they do not have any influence over. Do not engage in terrorist activities of any kind, since even if it is for a just cause these usually only cause death and destruction among civilians while accomplishing little else.

Do not deliver support to hostile actions against governments or intra governmental organisations recognised by the council as just (at this point the Systems Alliance and all its member states.). Finally any armed forces under the direct command of any member religion of this Council will be dedicated to the defence of both their right of freedom of Religion and physical safety, unless said the execution of the first right by somebody forcefully impedes the availability of either of the rights for another person.

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28th of February 2134 CE

Initial public reception of the new Council of Faiths is overall positive, however there are numerous people that think that the exclusion of less organised and very small religions due to the needed minimum of official members will make it unrepresentative of the social or religious spectrum of society as a whole.

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March 2134 CE

The first prototypes of Mass Effect shields are made, though they are currently still in a very early alpha stadium, since they are unstable, do not hold up against anything with more striking power than a strong punch and only seem to be able to block things the size of or smaller than golf-balls due to their higher efficiency the smaller of a projectile is fired at them, making the current variations useless on the battlefield. However it is progress and more funds are put into the research, hoping that with this they might also find out a way to get plasma shielding to work somewhat efficiently since it is expected that like with all Element Zero technologies, the scale of efficient use of the devices will stop them from being able to be used as defensive shields around cities and most certainly of whole planets.

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November 2134 CE

The first actually military useful Mass Effect shields are created, these are mainly useful for tanks and IFV's right now, as the relatively new technology requires cooling devices that are too large for infantrymen to carry to ensure the safety of the current generation of devices, while due to the limited amount of Element zero available it is considered far too expensive to make anything yet that could cover a full ship, preferring to use the IFV's and tanks as test groups to advance the technology further first.

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January 2135 CE

On an exploration a lightyear North of Arcturus gravity anomalies are detected by a scout ship, upon arrival what seems to be a large partially destroyed construct is found on an asteroid that somehow has its own gravity despite not being anywhere near large enough nor close enough to another stellar object to possess that by nature. The scout ship messages back to home base, afraid of exploring by itself and potentially waking something since the construct is somehow blocking all scans of the asteroid.

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20th through to the 29th of January 2135 CE

Scout drone pilot Richard Lawson arrives at the system he had first noticed so many years ago and starts scanning everything in the system. He eventually finds that apparently there is a gas giant on the outer edges of the system that his systems hadn't noticed when the system was first 'found' by him. The planetoid with an atmosphere apparently has an atmosphere already suited to human life, though the surface is mostly dominated by large savannah like dry areas, with native flora and fauna other than forms of grass being near exclusively close to one of the five large sweet water seas present on the planet.

The still unnamed planet has two moons, one of them roughly equal in size to Luna with another far smaller one behind it, only some 10 kilometres in diameter, though the smaller one seems to have been part of the larger one at some point. He sends all information back on the 29th.

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April 2135 CE

The investigation flotilla arrives with a ground force detachment to further the search, landing a number of people on the asteroid. It is soon found out that the place was a last refuge of a group of stranded Prothean civilians, who's ship had crashed into the Asteroid. The ship was originally meant to form a purpose similar to the arc ships, with a large amount of information on agriculture, Prothean terraforming methods, how to prepare animals both levo and dextro for Prothean consumption, basic masonry, how to industrially produce Element Zero and everything else a new society would need to start up. Apparently however the ship had been forced to leave far earlier than planned due to a Reaper assault, causing them to have miscalculated the jump and ending with them crashing into the asteroid.

This ended up killing all of those that were inside Cryopods instantly while only about half of the crew survived. While the crew managed to start up a facility on the asteroid before trying to repair the ship, it seems that a malfunction to the already barely working air filtration system killed all but one of the still alive Protheans, causing him to note down a log in the hope of a young species finding it and hopefully avenging the death of his people against the Reapers before he committed suicide.

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May 2135 CE

While it is considered a saddening fact by Systems Alliance high command that they once again have only found some corpses and ruins, there are a few large positives to this situation: they now have a way to create more Element Zero and they also know more about this hostile force called the Reapers. It is found however that the creation of Element Zero is something that will need to happen in an extremely desolate region of a planet with an atmosphere and with workers that sign on knowing the health risks as the creation process is extremely dangerous to both organic and synthetic beings due to the amount of radiation that will come free upon creation of the substance that even the gear that could be used to walk indefinitely into an area permanently irradiated to the same level as the immediate aftermath of the detonation of something like a Tsar Bomb and survive wouldn't protect you for more than a few hours of working with or near Element Zero creation process, however said level of protective gear would make it near impossible to efficiently perform the procedures to produce the element.

The Prothean idea behind 'solving' this issue was not something they were willing to copy and use since that was to simply send in a mixture of slaves, criminals and machines controlled by V.I.. With the only synthetics intelligent enough to accomplish the process humanity has being AI and the effect of the Element Zero creation has on incoming and outgoing signals all these options are deemed as unethical in the extreme and humanity instead starts researching a way to create radiation resistant machines or upping the strength of the already existing anti-radiation vaccination for humans.

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June 2135 CE

Due to the findings gotten from the research into Element Zero shielding, new perspectives and an advance in technology has brought advances in the plasma based shielding that had been attempted to be realized by Chinese researchers in the previous century. What has been found is that plasma shielding works in near the opposite direction of Element Zero shielding requirement wise, as it is comparatively cheaper to produce the larger both the shield generator and the area needed to be shielded is. There is hope that in the far future this can be applied to both heavy dreadnoughts and Superdreadnoughts. The first experiments into actually building a Plasma Shield Generator are started on an asteroid near Mars, since it is unknown yet if it might have harmful side-effects to either humans or the environment of a planet.

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June 2136 CE

The first hybrid FTL drive that is a combination of Eezo drives and Lightspeed drives is created and shortly after put into a pre-prepared ship. The tests show positive results: it has a maximum speed of 50 times the speed of light, with it being able to be used for roughly one month without having to dump heat at the speed of 30 times the speed of light. It has several severe disadvantages though still in comparison to the lightspeed drives: it will be far too expensive to actually install in large combat ships due to costing exponentially more the more volume the ship it is used on possess, while also unlike the lightspeed drive which only needed some energy to start up, this drive also needs an actual constant supply of physical fuel like the Eezo FTL drives do. Searches are done for something that is more useful for this long-term rather than oil, considering the reserves of this are almost fully depleted.

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July 2136 CE

It is found after some experimentation that a substance called 'Helium 3' can be used as fuel for the new currently not yet named hybrid FTL drives. Helium 3 mining is started up shortly afterwards in the orbit of Saturn, where it was known the element was beforehand but since there had been little use for it no large scale mining expeditions had been done at the planet before this.

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August and September 2136 CE

During these months all ships built long ago for the settling of extra-solar colonies are equipped with hybrid FTL drives, being prepared to be sent to both the solar system 15 lightyears away and later on towards the system to the north of Sol.

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October 2136 CE

The Plasma Shield generator on the asteroid has been finished, once activated the shield covers the entirety of the asteroid, which has a 30 kilometre diameter. Elation is felt all around and a plan is started to build a planetary shield generator once the technology has advanced some more on each planet under control of either Systems Alliance member-states or the Alliance itself. After this breakthrough a plan is also proposed and accepted surrounding research into a shielding system that mixes Plasma Shielding with Element Zero shielding, to cover the disadvantages of Element Zero shielding in not defending against Directed Energy Weaponry (DEW), while it would also work to alleviate the issue of just how much Element Zero would be needed to shield anything larger than a light cruiser.

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November 2136 CE

The terraforming of Titan is done, portions of the moon are now habitable for humans if they have both special genetic treatment and live inside domed environments for a large portion of their stay. The areas that could be terraformed have a mainly a tundra like nature, with several large warm spots with lakes made up out of water instead of the methane lakes that are located on all other portions of the surface around the moon. Only about a tenth of the moon is habitable in comparison to currently nearly two thirds of Mars, however it is still believed to be enough since it has a far lower number of colonists wanting to head there than Mars had. It is also believed that further terraforming will add half of the current size to the area suited for human habitation, though the remainder will most likely remain uninhabitable due to the methane and ethane lakes located there, the removal of which would probably undo a large amount of the original terraforming work or even destroy the planets eco-system in its entirety. Gravity enhancers are also built on the moon in spots selected for early settlement, to ensure people can lead somewhat normal lives on the moon.

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December 2136 CE

The first wave of colonists arrives on Titan, while after they are brought there the colony fleet is loaded with the colonists heading towards the now named 'Demeter' system, 15 lightyears south of Sol. Unlike Titan, the planet is as far as is known already fully suited for human habitation, and thus will be a far easier place to colonize, with what little terraforming needed already having taken place for the most part by the flotilla sent towards it years previous.

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February 2137 CE

The first Directed Energy Weapon that can efficiently be used by infantry is created, the Laser Musket. It is as the name implies a one-shot weapon and will function more as a collapsible anti-armour weapon than anything else. It is far more powerful than even the most advanced and newest versions of the plasma musket that has been in use by the Chinese military for decennia, however it is also far more expensive to create and both only need to be supplied with energy cartridges and allowed to cool down some while in the field to function. Due to the interchangeability of these cartridges, ammo would be relatively easy to gain for either weapon no matter where in Alliance space you are.

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May 2137 CE

The colonisation fleet arrives in the Demeter system, where they find out that as previously expected, no alien species besides some local fauna and animals had been found, while the planet had already been mostly suited for human habitation while some slight work terraforming ensured there would be little to no problems for the initial wave of colonists. This information is sent back to Sol while the heavy frigates stay there as a defence force while the scout drone continues exploring both the local Solar system and asteroids near it.

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July 2137 CE

A scouting expedition North of Arcturus has found an asteroid with a large element zero deposit, which shortly afterwards is brought back to Arcturus system to be mined.

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November 2137 CE

The sheer amount of Element zero in the asteroid has allowed for a new wave of experimentation, which had to be stopped previously because the hybrid engines took up nearly all the Element zero reserves the System Alliance and its member states combined possessed. One of the effects this has had is that the Kinetic weapon systems of the Alliance and its member states can be strengthened by adding element zero to the rail-guns, heightening the speed of the munitions and allowing for them to use less materials for more powerful shots. A way is also found to create infantry weaponry with this, which has the severe advantage of allowing you to have near infinite ammunition for small-arms, in exchange for the problem that the weapons have little in the way of penetration power.

This has made it so that weapons functioning on element zero only, even if at some point in the future there will be more than enough of the element to mass produce weapons with it at very cheap rates, will not be used very much as the main weapons of ground-forces. It simply doesn't have the fire-power per shot of modern high-quality gunpowder weapons, nor the ability to simply bypass kinetic barriers that directed energy weapons have nor the absolutely murderous effect plasma has on shielded targets while in atmosphere.

What it has also allowed for though is that a way is found to enhance gunpowder weapons with element zero, though it would add the problem of needing to give rifles far better cooling systems. The idea is put on hold until a way is found to actually use the Element zero factories to consistently have large amounts of the element on hand and the rifle enhancing method itself will be cost-effective enough to be mass-produced. Early kinetic barrier designs for ships are also produced around this point in time.

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January 2138 CE

A large amount of funds is put into a team trying to work out how to create energy or plasma weapons that can function as actual mainstay infantry guns instead of only being able to serve as anti-armour weapons for their infantry. The research is combined in this because it is intended for them to continue on working with whichever option they make the first breakthrough in.

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February 2138 CE

The first prototypes of the Eagle 1 fighter are introduced, an American fighter design that possesses an Eezo core, giving it both basic shielding and more manoeuvrability, with its machine guns also being Element Zero enhanced. The production of these fighter planes only happens on a relatively small scale since while no longer a shortage Element Zero is still also rare, with no new Asteroids containing it having been found.

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March 2138

The first planetary shield facility is made operational on Terra, where it is located in the middle of Australia because of the ease with which the massive complex could be situated there. It is intended to have backup facilities in Siberia and Northern Canada, to ensure if one is taken out the shield will still be able to survive. The locations are chosen for their remote-ness and how easy it will be to actually build the 500 by 500 by 80 meter facilities there in comparison to on most other locations on the planet, where large amounts of pre-existing structures would have to be demolished to get this much uncultivated land.

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July 2140

A breakthrough has been made in the research into strengthening the anti-radiation vaccine, and with the combination of that and advanced environmental suits it is now somewhat safe to work with the Element Zero creation process in single hour shifts, though because of the dangers during the operation it will only be available to the national militaries, Systems Alliance military personnel and those small time criminals that volunteered for the industrial Element Zero production program in exchange for shortening of their jail times. Several thousands either die or are crippled due to the vaccine, however while lamented and with a several riots because of it afterwards, it is overall accepted as necessary casualties, with many fearing the potentially far more advanced alien empires that might very well find humanity at some point in the future and simply attack.

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August 2140 CE

Work on building the first Element Zero production factory is started in a desolate region on Mars, with hundreds of millions in dollars, euro's and yen is being spent to make sure it is built not only quickly but also durably enough for it to stand the test of time.

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January 2141 CE

The Element Zero factory is finished and the creation of Element Zero is begun during this month. While early on efficiency in production is relatively low due to inexperience in producing the element, long term prospects are very positive.

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February 2141 CE

The efficiency of the production process in the first factory has risen enough that it is deemed well enough for another five Element Zero factories to be built. Roughly 1 kilogram of Element Zero is produced in the first factory every day, which seems low to most of the population until they look further and realize that a single fighter jet will only require somewhere between 20 and 50 grams of Element Zero with the lowest amount being if you only give it Element Zero shielding and nothing else. While the average Element Zero enhanced assault rifle only costs roughly one gram of the stuff.

(Canon Systems Alliance fighters use 100 grams of Eezo, however those are almost entirely reliant on the stuff for everything from shielding, to weapons systems, to actually being able to manoeuvre their ships outside of atmosphere to possibly even life support inside the cockpit. As mentioned before most of what I know about Mass Effect comes from playing one game years ago and information found on the various wiki's on it out there. So I'm unsure of some things.)

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May 2141

Due to the prior experience with building the previous factory, the next three are built both faster and with less costs attached to them, being finished during this month. They are also expected to be up to a decent level of production efficiency faster than the previous one. After this new factories are built continuedly.

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June 2141 CE

The project to create an energy weapon bears fruit, with as a result a 5 shot laser bolt action rifle. The power in the rifle is drawn from single shot cartridges, of which five can be inserted into the rifle that disintegrate upon being fired. While the weapon shows much promise, it is more of a prototype that proves it is possible rather than the new main weapon for the average rifleman. Some three-hundred are produced, and though most remain in the lab, fifty are outfitted with bayonets and gifted to the Systems Alliance for use as ceremonial weapons that can ignore the shields in case an assassin or gun for hire gets their hand on personal shielding in the future. It is however expected that laser rifles will always be more expensive than Element Zero rifles, no matter how advanced both technologies might get in the future.

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September 2141 CE

Due to slowly growing ties between the countries but also their inability to fully compete on the market against the EU or the Chinese People's Republic, the sovereign nations of Mexico, Canada and the USA join into the UNAS, United North American Nations, a coalition similar to the European and African Unions.

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November 2141 CE

The UNAS starts a combined research into how to build Eezo enhanced and on a less large level, Eezo based weapons as they deem enough Eezo is currently available that such a large weapons overhaul is within the realm of possibility.

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January 2142 CE

The Systems Alliance holds a vote on opening the Mass Relay in Arcturus System heading North-West, the vote is a majority positive, the relay will be opened in early June.

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March 2142 CE

A message has arrived back at the Systems Alliance headquarters from the scouting drone of Flight Lieutenant Richard Lawson, which indicates that the planet in the system would be not only close to perfect for human settlement, but that there are no nearby signs of alien habitation. The first wave of the colonizing fleet prepared years ago is sent towards the system to the north, expected to arrive in slightly less than 8 months, most of the colonists are those who either want to leave behind SOL, some out of fear that SOL might become a battleground once they meet aliens, others because of tragedies experienced in their personal lives.

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June 2142 CE

An 'exploration group' stands by as a science vessel opens the relay. While officially called that, in reality it's an assault fleet with 300 combat ships and 20 troop transports, with ships ranging from frigates to dreadnoughts lead by the heavy dreadnoughts SSV Shield of Terra and the UFC Sword of Mars while the Arcturus garrison is temporarily strengthened by two more two fleets from SOL under command of the UNAS Freedom Flight and the CCP Hammer of the People respectively, each a hundred ships large. This all in addition to the original four fleets already stationed there. Some concern are had over the fact that more than half of humanities ships are now outside of SOL including most of the high quality or more modern ships, but it is relatively quiet in comparison to the enlarged public support for the decision to be able to hold their own no matter what they find once they enter the system behind the relay.

They find a solar system with a single planet that will need little terraforming to be inhabitable for humans, while early scans show a small number of solar systems with planetary bodies inside of them within a range of less than ten lightyears. Scouting parties are sent out towards them.

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July 2142 CE

The solar systems are explored, with several of them having planets that without any form of terraforming are already fully habitable for humans, one of which is given to the Chinese in return for them supporting a full scale fleet around that planet from that moment on since there is also a relay inside that system. It is named Shanxi, and will be the main military post of all nations under the banner of the Systems Alliance in the region. One of the other planets, while liveable is seemingly a planet-sized version of Siberia, the planet is to be colonised by a combined effort of the member states of the European Union, with the Russian Federation at its head.

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August 2142

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The Systems Alliance militia is formed, it is supposed to serve as a future replacement for Systems Alliance army troops serving as planetary guard forces away from the direct front during a war to free them up for hostile actions or as re-enforcements to endangered planets. It will, at the very least early on, be trained up and lead by retired Systems Alliance personnel, just like the original Systems Alliance army was trained up by retired soldiers from national governments.

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September 2142

A conscription law is passed in the Systems Alliance parliament, in case of a war a vote can be held to get 20% of all unemployed Systems Alliance citizens of between 21 and 35 conscripted into either the militia, the army or the navy depending on their own choice after being conscripted in. There are exceptions, most of them revolving around childcare and studying. This conscription law will only be in play on area's controlled by the Systems Alliance directly, however most nation states pass similar laws for their own militaries, though in those the option of militia is replaced with the somewhat more professional but also more dangerous option of becoming reservists.

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October 2142

A law has been passed where small-time criminals can join penal battalions of the military instead of going to jail for a certain amount of years, these units will essentially be shock troopers in offensive operations on lightly inhabited worlds or as a highly mobile defence force.

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December 2142

The human population in the galaxy has risen to 21,8 Billion, slightly more than 17 billion of whom are adults. Of the adult population 10% is part of the armed forces, either directly in the professional military, or less directly in either the National reservists or Systems Alliance militia units.

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January 2143

It is discovered almost on accident after an experiment done on a dare that full Eezo FTL engines, unlike previously thought, can still be of use for something: information transmission. Research into how this would work starts immediately with extremely large funding, as this could revolutionize communication and in turn both governing and military operations while doing away with a large number of logistical issues, instead of having to rely on communication corvettes such as is done now.

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February 2143

An exploration flotilla several lightyears south of Shanxi finds a previously unknown star system with a liveable, if very cold planet. Several systems are also noticed to be within less than 5 lightyears out from their current location, with the reason behind why they weren't found previously being relatively unclear.

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June 2143

The best Hybrid FTL engine currently available allows for a maximum speed of 300 times the speed of light, which can be used at such speeds for four months.

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July 2143

The gathered colonisation fleet is sent towards the system discovered by Richard Lawson, they will arrive in roughly 7 months.

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December 2143

The new communication system, which works in essentially the same way as the relays do but then for information as opposed to ships is now ready for massed production. It requires for beacons to be seeded in space that will receive and 'shoot' information at speeds roughly one lightyear per day, which means that unlike previously ships do not need to be sent to and from Systems to bring over information if it needs to get there fast since now information transmission actually goes faster than the ships themselves would.

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March 2144

The colonisation fleet arrives in the newly named 'Haven' system with a slight delay in comparison to the previously expected time-frame, and start colonising the planet, settling near exclusively around and on the large lakes, using the least advanced/most damaged ships as a foundation to build small towns around the planet.

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November 2145

The USA produces the first Avenger Class Fighter, intended to be the mainstay fighter for all militia and reservist forces, as an easily mass produced but still high quality atmospheric fighter, sending 50 free 'samples' to the Systems Alliance.

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December 2145

The Systems Alliance high command accepts the Avenger Class fighter as the main-stay atmospheric fighter for non-professional units.

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February 2146

The combined efforts of researchers from all over the Systems Alliances territories have finally managed it: an energy assault rifle with a decent magazine capacity and a good firing rate that can also be mass produced without too many problems. It's a thirty shot weapon, with a similar build to regular assault rifles, while the 'ammo' comes in the form of a rechargeable pack roughly 30 centimetres long, 20 cm wide and 4 cm thick that is replaced in the same way current ammunition packs of assault rifles are, making reloading a relatively simple process.

It is the first of the 'Sword' series assault rifles, but will not be the last. It is to be the service rifle of the infantry of the countries belonging to NATO, while also available to the Systems Alliance and all its member states, most of them are not yet planning on using them as they are afraid it will be nearly useless when facing hostiles that follow a technology path not related to Mass Effect, due to its lesser stopping power in comparison to say, the American Lancer Eezo-enhanced assault rifle, making it less useful against heavily armoured targets or enemies that have shielding not reliant on kinetic barriers. Unknown to the humans at this point, the energy assault rifle still has enough stopping power to remain either lethal or crippling to all enemies among the 'council' species regardless of what armour they were except for Elcor and Krogan, whom if armoured have an easier time dealing with it.

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April 2146

All ships of light dreadnought class and above are getting their new 'Plasma Shields' installed, which while slightly less effective against Kinetic attacks than the Kinetic barriers that could have been installed on these ships, are both far cheaper and also defend against attack types that would simply bypass Kinetic barriers, such as lasers, other energy attacks and, unknown to the Systems Alliance, Warp torpedoes. Heavy cruisers will for now still use make-shift kinetic barriers due to power issues that would be caused by using plasma shields on these ships. Construction starts focusing on heavier ships, especially heavy dreadnoughts and heavy carriers after this with the intention on giving a single one of these ships to every fleet fielded by the Systems Alliance and her member states, if only for the sheer intimidation factor provided by them and the morale enhancer they would be for their own troops.

June 2146

The UNAS starts exporting the first Mass Effect reliant infantry pistols, which while having less firepower will have thousands of rounds of ammunition with only single blocks of synthesized metals needed to reload while also being able to collapse themselves into magnetic blocks, making them an ideal solution logistically as a secondary weapon for the Systems Alliance and national infantry troops.

Non-infantry units, mainly tank and air-force personnel, get these weapons assigned to them for the ease with which they can keep them on themselves without taking up space in their vehicles or making it hard to move around in them. As main weapons for infantry soldiers however they are far less useful due to the inability to actually reload it quickly with its 'reloading' after on average 50 shots being that it needs to cool down for twenty-five to thirty seconds.

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August 2146

Eezo enhanced rifles in the USA finally reach a state where the techniques can actually be used to én masse turn current gunpowder reliant service rifles into Eezo-enhanced versions, which unlike the Eezo based ones didn't have a cooldown time at any point due to overheating, as the only additions that can actually overheat being a projectile accelerator inside, which the new 'heatsinks' produced through years of research would be capable of cooling down as fast or faster than it was heating up as long as the rifle wasn't being fired on full-auto for a full minute, which was virtually impossible anyways due to the need to manually reload the weapons and the fact that no trained soldier would waste that much ammunition.

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November 2146

The number of Eezo factories on the industrial terrain on Mars have grown to two-hundred-sixty, while each now produces 2 kilograms of Eezo a day, with it still growing to enable to actually match demand. While gaps in said demand are currently being filled up with occasional asteroids or ruins found with some Eezo stored, this soon will not be the case anymore.

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February 2147

The Systems Alliance currently has 18 operational combat fleets, with all of them containing their full 100 ships, with another 40 patrol squadrons not attached to any fleet. All nation states on earth combined have another 30 combat fleets (Most of these serve as garrison forces on colonies though, unlike their Systems Alliance counterparts) and 90 patrol squadrons operational. However, most of these fleets are filled with barely trained crews, nobody has any experience in space age combat and the space-based combat strategy manuals are dangerously empty due to only having what experience that could be brought over from the wet-water navies, which is very little outside of basic battleship, carrier, screening and submarine warfare. On top of this, the system alliance has some 9 halfway ready fleets, with them having most of their smaller ships already however most of them not possessing a single one of their intended heavier ships, with the nation states having 10 partially ready fleets, however most of them are further along to completion in comparison to the System Alliance's.

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March 2147

While infantry kinetic barriers have been available for a while, previous to this they were hard to produce on a large scale due to not having a cost-effective way of producing high quality miniaturized cooling systems for them, however due to a breakthrough in that field adopted from the still relatively new assault rifles, mass production of kinetic barriers to enhance the capabilities of ground soldiers when faced with kinetic weaponry dependant enemies.

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April 2147

An Eezo Hauler crashes near Perth in Australia, killing thousands, while giving hundreds more a strange sickness that at first sight seems to work like a weird mix of the bubonic plague and some forms of cancer. Dozens of others, mostly among younger victims suddenly gain slight, somewhat supernatural abilities. Both of the latter groups are quarantined in medical special medical centres as fast as possible to ensure they will not experience (further) problems because of it.

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July 2147

No cure has been found for those who got the strange disease, which for now is being called Eezo-sickness for lack of a better name, however a vaccine is being created which can prevent future infection with the sickness, it is expected to be done somewhere in early December of the same year.

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December 2147

The vaccine to the still not truly named Eezo sickness is fully realized, and mass-production of it is started immediately for both the military and civilian sectors.

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January 2148

The reason behind the slight supernatural powers of some of the victims is found out, the Eezo they were exposed to bound itself to their nerve systems in some way and allowed them to now manipulate small objects with it, albeit very shaky and for short periods of time. Long term benefits of this are realised by many almost immediately though, causing numerous countries to start researching methods on how to both safely implant the Eezo and how to allow the individuals with the abilities to harness them more effectively.

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February 2148

While there is an initial wide-spread fear of the potential effects of the supernatural abilities, the Council of Faiths quickly starts a campaign against this, with many local religious leaders proclaiming the abilities to be a gift that could protect the innocent, instead of some form of curse. Due to the fast response, this quickly changes most people's opinions on the subject.

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April 2148

The name 'Biotic' is coined for those with the Eezo-related powers, the name being gained by holding a survey among those affected by it and their parents/caretakers before holding a popular vote. With most of them being teenagers or young children, this name is taken over from a popular show that can be watched on both the web and television.

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June 2148

Many countries hold votes on whether or not small scale general conscription should be re-introduced or in other cases added to, depending on whether the country still had conscription in some form, and votes are held to either start a new conscription ratio of 1% of the population or add 0.5% to the current conscription law. In nearly all countries this vote passes, though in some only barely. France and Germany are exceptions, where instead both of these are considered too small and after an intense debate it is instead voted in as a 4% conscription rate in both countries, with many world-wide not understanding anything about it, but the populations of both countries rejoice.

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September 2148

A new packet of genetic modifications is introduced world-wide, that allows for an increase in raw physical strength of 10% for soldiers and roughly 5% increase in overall endurance without much of any consequence, however said modification can be turned up to 40% for both but this would turn the operation from a bog-standard procedure with little that could go wrong into a life or death situation with a 50/50 chance of survival. Shortly afterwards the highest modification is banned by international law.

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November 2148

Hybrid FTL engines are now able to reach speeds of 1 lightyear, and keep this speed up for close to eight months without having to dump the static build-up, meanwhile regular FTL engines are able to reach 40 times the speed of light by this point but can keep this up infinitely. These are now added to the newly finished ARC survival ships, which were finished a few years ahead of schedule due to advances in shipbuilding technology, even with the projects being hampered by the secrecy being more resource and manpower intensive to maintain than it was originally thought to be.

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December 2148

New advances in plasma shielding has allows to refit heavy cruisers with this type of shielding, which is almost immediately embraced by all Alliance affiliated militaries.

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January 2149

A new weapon is designed by the teams of Alliance scientists researching possibilities of weaponized Eezo: a gravity hammer. While originally designed just to see if it was at all possible, the prototype quickly turns out to be deadly in single hits to all forms of armour lesser than the most heavily armoured Main Battle Tanks, and even then it can take out the tracks or gun of these tanks with relative ease if the wielder of the hammer manages to get close enough.

An order for more research and once finished to a level suitable for massed production is sent in by the Vatican in name for the Religious Volunteers army within a week of this discovery being made known to military officials, with a pre-emptive order of 100000 of these weapons once they are at said mass production stage.

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March 2149

The concept of a hoverbike is introduced by Australian Engineers, using a nuclear powered Eezo using bike that can fly up to 15 meters and will be able to traverse all forms of terrain, while the design is made in such a way that if something happens to the system allowing it to float wheels can be attached to it instead turning it into a regular Nuclear powered motor bike.

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June 2149

Jeff Moreau is born to Jacques and Elisabeth Mareau, him a lieutenant in the French Grand Armée, while she is a restaurant owner in Paris.

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November 2149

The oldest among the young biotics in Australia, one Richard Smith, joins the Religious Volunteer Army.

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December 2149

An implant is designed to allow for better control of biotic abilities, it strengthens them slightly but mainly allows for better control and severely reduces the chance of accidental use of the powers in daily life.

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January 2150

A Canadian medical worker by accident discovers a way to semi-safely implant Eezo into a person, however the operation only has a 10% chance of success on top of only being possible to perform on people underneath the age of 20. If the operation fails, the patient will not get any serious health issues, however it will waste enough Eezo that could be used to create enough equipment to fully outfit several soldiers. Because of this, the only military that offers this fully at this stage in operations already is the Religious Volunteer Army, whom have found that Richard Smiths abilities have so far been a near perfect complement for their overall combat doctrine.

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March 2150

The gravity hammer design is now fully ready for mass production, and before the end of the month the first batch shall be transported to the Religious Volunteer Army.

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June 2150

The UNAS for the first time shows their new 'Hovertanks' to the general public, with them intended to be light scouting tanks in addition to the regular main battle tanks, however with the addition of retractable sets of tracks to ensure that if an enemy manages to take out Eezo-reliant technology or simply damaged the hover systems the tanks can still move and fight.

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October 2150

The Systems Alliance does a population survey, the Systems Alliance currently has 22,5 billion members, 19 billion of whom are adults, with AI making up 100 million among that number. Of this total adult population roughly 15% is either a member of the military whether directly or indirectly, or secondly will be called upon in case a war starts.

The average fleet fielded by the Systems Alliance has 1 heavy dreadnought or heavy carrier, 4 light dreadnoughts, 2 light carriers, 18 heavy cruisers, 40 light cruisers and 25 heavy frigates. On long term or planetary offensive operations these fleets will have Freighter groups added to them as supply units and secondary troop carriers. 25 of these fleets are currently operational, with another 5 expected to be brought to operational levels with the next year. In addition to this there are currently 70 systems alliance patrol squadrons, each containing one light cruiser, two heavy frigates and twelve light frigates. Once a war breaks out each fleet gets two patrol groups assigned to them, in order to provide reconnaissance and counter hostile recon groups. The remaining patrol groups will be assigned to colonial defence duties on colonies near the front lines. To top all this off there are 10 stealth/recon squadrons, while there are roughly 500 corvettes in service throughout the Systems Alliance that serve as additions to border defence fleets. The total number of combat ships flying the flag of the SA directly is 4050, 2710 of whom are classed as varying forms of 'capital' ships.

Nation-States fleets vary far more in their make-up in comparison to SA fleets, for example the European Union fleets have a far larger amount of heavy cruiser and above ships, while the Chinese and American fleets have a far larger number of smaller ships in them. That said in total there are 40 currently operational fleets fielded by the nation-states in total, with no other fleets to be expected to be fielded over the next few years, with most resources currently going to upgrading older ships currently in service. The 90 patrol squadrons of these nations vary even more in what is in them than the fleets do, though they all have 20 ships inside of them, the additional ships in comparison to SA fleets usually caused by the fact that these patrol groups are usually halfway filled with corvettes unlike their SA counterparts. This gives them a total of 5800 ships in the field, however of these roughly 2000 are older models that are in near desperate need of upgrades, most of these being among the smaller ships such as light frigates and corvettes.

Meanwhile the total population of Council Space has risen to 114 billion people, with close to 25000 operational combat ships fielded by all Council memberstates in total, 19000 of which are intended for frontline combat with the remaining 6000 being armed reconaisance, armed troop transports and law enforcement vessels. 18.000 of the total number of ships are owned by the Turian Hierarchy. However, due to the long time without many changes, most older ships in moth-ball fleets (from anywhere between 300 and 2000 years old) can easily be returned to active service and filled up with reservists, which would give an additional 26000 combat ships to the Citadel Council as a whole, of which 14000 are Asari vessels and 8000 Turian vessels, with most of the remainder being Batarian ships. On average military service rate of the Citadel populations is 8%.

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November 2150

The HALO group arrives in the new dimension after their harrowing battle for the space station.

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Finally done. Okay for everyone that actually read that full thing, my apologies that this took so long. For those who skipped past most things here is a short summary:

Due to long periods of peace most countries that were formerly hostile to one another are now friendly rivals at worst, humanity found out about the Reapers early due to far faster and more intensive colonisation of Mars, the Systems Alliance has 23 billion inhabitants, working AI and a 15% of the population inside their military if militia's and conscripts are included. Biotics are mainly a thing in Australia, the Systems Alliance and her member states combined posses enough ships to be a serious threat to the citadel council even if they lose one ship for every council loss, however the Humans have overall better ships. Meanwhile in council space a Quarian-Krogan alliance has been close to a war with the Citadel Council for years, with tensions likely to boil over at some point in the next two decades.

Thank you all for reading this, I will have the next chapter posted in January at the latest, however I now have to go over it because apparently while the chapter is finished I made a ton of mistakes with it and I only found out now.


	6. Preparing for the inevitable, chapter 1

In the name of Earth and Balaho, till the bitter end!

Dimension: Mass Effect, Solar system: SOL, Planet: Titan, Location: New Balaho Shipyards, Date: 2-3-2151, 12.28 local time, POV: 3rd person

While half of the shipyard is still under construction, one dock was fully finished several weeks before, with a single ship now being built inside of it. According to the original designers only a frigate, by the Systems Alliance regular classification a high end light cruiser, but because of the sheer power of its weapons and the thickness of its armour, it was considered part of the newly designated re-emerging ship classification: a battlecruiser. It was nearing completion and would soon be the first of its kind flying the SA colours, a sign of hope and strength for the people that were now expecting war with a group of alien governments, or something far worse than that, to happen very soon. One of the unfinished docks however is far larger than all the others, being at roughly five times the size of the dozen or so other unfinished docks.

Beyond the shipyard a city can be seen, with portions of it still under construction but most of the work already having been done. A very large building near the centre of the city was encompassed by a large pressurization shield is full of activity, with humans in navy and army uniforms of both the SA itself and its various member states walking into and out of said building while chatting with each-other or eating lunches before a bell rings, causing them to pack up and head back inside. Once inside we follow a group of navy officers into a classroom to see Cortana standing in front of a holographic board on the wall, waving at the students to start sitting down.

''Welcome back class, now as this is my last class with this group and I have taught you everything I could about actual large scale space-bound naval battles already that can actually be shown anywhere else than during a battle or at the very least on a space-ship itself, you are now all allowed to ask me subject related questions. Does anyone have some?'' Immediately nearly all hands in the room shoot up, causing the teacher to chuckle. ''Hmm lets see, Lieutenant Zimmerman, what is your question?'' While saying this she points to a large Caucasian man in the first row with relatively pale skin.

''Admiral, while you have given us numerous explanations about our potential enemies, the strength of your enemies in your home dimension and the strengths of our current ships in addition to tactical and strategic options that could be used during space-bound naval warfare. However, you have told us relatively little of how your upgraded Marathon class 'Heavy Cruiser' design, which to us will be a heavy dreadnought and a full on super-dreadnought to the council, outside of the fact that the ships the idea was taken from would, if given the upgrades intended, be able to fight an entire SA fleet on its own with a decent chance of winning, and two or three citadel fleets with a certainty of winning the battle. How may of these ships are intended to be produced and exactly what will its capabilities weapon and armour wise be?''

The admiral seemed to think on this for a moment, before answering. ''An excellent question. The Marathon class will be the flagships of our new battlecruiser and other heavy duty fast response fleets, with its ability to travel 100 lightyears a day due to its state of the art slipspace drive, while having a MAC gun as its main armament that can deal up to 950 kilotons of damage per hit. On top of this it has 60 of the newest Onager MAC's which each will deal 10 kilotons of damage per hit, thus serving as excellent broadside weapons against council forces during any operation and on top of this all it will have 50 torpedo and missile pods, filled with a mix of the new archer missiles and the older Firefly torpedo, while also having three WMD torpedo pods with a total of twenty-four WMD torpedo's, to be used only against reaper class or more dangerous hostiles, such as the possibility of something similar to the Flood existing here.

Additionally due to its ability to enlarge the entering portal of its slipspace drive, it will be able to speed up the travel capabilities of smaller ships with lesser slipspace drives, though it is not advised to use ships that do not have slipspace drives at all in combination with it as those wouldn't be able to create their own emergency exits. The total production for the decade of these ships is expected to be three or four, depending on how large the total costs of building one will be precisely with the additions and upgrades to the ship and how the economy grows in that same period of time.'' She looked around the classroom, seeing the students look at her with great interest about the following answers. ''Now as for the armour of the ship it will be 2 meters thick on most of the ship, however in more critical sections it will be three meters thick…'' And so the Systems Alliance prepared for the wars to come.

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Dimension: Mass Effect, Solar system: SOL, Planet: ?, Location: ?, Date: ? local time, POV: 3rd person

Streaks of blue light can be seen lighting the sky while the shells can be heard and felt impacting the ground, as the already damaged buildings of a once thriving city pan into view with some of them being caught in the explosions of kinetic force caused by the direct hits of the shells, while others crumble from the shocks caused by the impact. High in the sky, some distance away from the city are the ones responsible for these shells, three Turian frigates hovering in a V-shape formation, with a squadron of fighters flying near the bow of the frontmost ship. Only for streaks of light, lasers, energy, plasma and blue kinetic light similar to the shots from the ships to fire back at them from the city down below in retaliation, destroying all of the fighters simultaneously while the frontmost frigate experiences a rippling of explosions all over its hull, staying in the air for a moment longer before it starts crashing down to the ground, the once threatening show of Hierarchy power now little more than a 150 meter long burning wreck.

The two remaining frigates are quickly retreating, dodging a number of the less co-ordinated shots that are now seemingly firing at will at them, while retaliating with shots of their own, causing some more buildings to be destroyed but having little visible effect on the amount of incoming fire. The leftmost one of the survivors takes a direct hit to something critical, most likely its reactor, causing a large explosion to occur midships and breaking it in two before both pieces start falling down to the ground in a fate similar to that of its colleague. The third manages to get out of range of the ground-based fire, but is heavily damage and shall not be in fighting condition for some time.

Dimension: Mass Effect, Solar system: SOL, Planet: ?, Location: Temporary Divisional Headquarters of the 5th combined SA division, Date: ?, POV: 3rd person

A green armoured giant can be seen walking into the room, causing the officers present to turn towards him and giving a near simultaneous salute, while getting one in return from the giant. ''So'' The spartan super soldier begins ''How much of our anti-air and anti-armour equipment is still combat effective after that last Turian airborne assault?''

A man wearing the insignia of a captain is the first to reply ''Ten anti-air and eight anti-tank pieces total have been destroyed by hostile fire, another fifteen of the first and ten of the latter are temporarily disabled due to a combination of previous damage and firing while damaged without repairs, on top of which four of each have been all but melted from over from overheating. We also suffered 30 crewmembers killed 30 infantrymen heavily injured, the latter from second battalion. This leaves us with some 35 anti-tank and 25 anti-air pieces left currently combat effective, though for some without full crewmembers to man them to full efficiency. In addition we still have 15 pieces of light field artillery left, though instead of its usual crews they are manned mostly by walking wounded from other units under direction of a single artillery officer and three artillery regulars.''

The giant nods at this. ''While not as good as hoped, it is still a better exchange than feared. Two frigates and one fighter squadron destroyed with a third frigate temporarily disabled in exchange for our losses.'' The other officers nod at this, before giving a thankful glance towards the captain that had devised the plan to lure the frigates in to take them out while they could still turn their full attention to them, instead of having to face a ground assault with frigate and fighter support. He turns towards the comms officer who had been in contact with theatre headquarters for a while. ''Any potential re-enforcements incoming for us?''

''Yes sir, however they at least half an hour or so to arrive here, let alone on the frontline itself. It will be a single full leg infantry division, though sadly enough they will be relatively new recruits and have little in heavy equipment outside of some motorized anti-tank guns as most of that got sent to the front on the other side of the planet, the enemy has a far larger armoured presence there it seems. Any motorized or armour support that might have been sent here now cannot be missed in other regions, the Council has begun a near planet-wide offensive against our forces.'' The master Chief nods to the man before he puts a holo-projector down on the table and activating it, showing a map of the local area, before he opens a menu and types in the relevant changes to their combat strength.

''As far as our AI can decode from intercepted Turian transmissions, there will be a three-pronged assault on our defensive line, with the total number of hostiles being at some 4400 Turian infantry regulars, 200 Volus auxiliary troops most of which will be logistic and medical support personnel and 50 light tanks in addition to their 150 crew members. The Volus troops will have little direct combat training, to a level slightly below or equal to most militia troops, however we are less lucky in that sense with the Turian units. Each prong of the initial assault will contain some 1200 infantrymen, with 400 infantry and their tanks remaining as reserves to be used if one of the three is close to achieving a breakthrough while the remaining 400 and the Volus troops will form a fallback line to retreat to in case their assault goes wrong in the extreme at some point.''

He let that sink in for a second before continuing ''Our own lines are now stretched thin, dangerously so on our left flank where only 150 men of second ODST battalion remain combat capable, with a dangerously high number of them being the battalion support staff now serving on the front lines. I will head out with my personal platoon to join them in their defence, as both the second and third battalion still have more than 300 men left each in combat effective states. If communications fall silent or my unit is destroyed in battle, command of the division shifts over to captain Moreau, however unless one of the flanks breaks, we need to hold no matter the cost. Is that understood?'' All the other officers in the room nodded.

As he saluted them again, getting one in reply from the others in the room, the Master Chief left the room before joining his men and sending a platoon wide com message to the power armoured troops. ''We're moving out to support the 2nd ODST battalion on the easternmost position of our line. Allied units will total around 190, ourselves included. The hostiles we will face will number at some 1400 Turians with possible tank support of 150 lights. Battle will commence at most 10 minutes after we arrive at the defensive lines, so we have no time to waste.''

Dimension: Mass Effect, Solar system: SOL, Planet: ?, Location: 2nd battalion of the 1st ODST Division's defensive position, Date: ?, POV: 3rd person

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As the Master Chief arrived at the centre of the left flanks trench-lines a young man walked up to him before giving him a sloppy salute. No offense was taken or given with this since the right arm the salute was attempted with was visibly heavily burned, with the armour that was supposed to be on it seemingly having both melted off and into portions of the flesh of the arm, surrounded in numerous places by bandages. ''Lieutenant Anderson reporting for duty colonel.'' Upon receiving a replying salute from the colonel he brought his arm down before sighing in relief as he looked over the power armoured re-enforcements. ''You and your soldiers are a sight for sore eyes colonel, with our current number any determined offensive by the opponent would have succeeded, with you and your men here we at least stand a chance.''

The aforementioned colonel looked around for a moment at the defensive line, seeing that a large number of the men were wounded, which had been mentioned in the messages sent to high command, what had not been mentioned however was just how bad a shape some of the walking/fighting wounded were. ''My men and I will be spread out evenly across the line, while we wait with firing at the enemy until they have some troops over the hill to ensure maximum casualties among the enemy, this is unless one portion of it is far worse of than the remainder of it and we would be better suited in specific locations?''

''The left flank of our line is worst off, they were the ones to take near direct hits from the earlier frigate bombardment among this battalion. I would send a larger number over myself, but most of my men that can move will be needed at the other locations in case of a hostile close quarters assault, while I also cannot afford to man them any lighter than they already are to be honest as that would leave gaps nearly too large to close in the line the moment even a single still fully mobile soldier is lost, in addition to the fact that a large portion of the heavier equipment such as machine guns was also lost on the leftmost portion of the line.''

The Master Chief nodded at this before replying ''I will personally head to the leftmost portion with 24 of my men, the remaining 16 will be evenly distributed among the centre and right flank of the line.'' The lieutenant nodded and saluted, after which the Master Chief repeated his orders to his men through the comms. Upon arrival, after assessing the situation, machine guns were set up, holes in the trench walls were patched up with omni-gel or, where none was available, with furniture and debris from the ruined buildings which themselves are turned into improvised bunkers and other strongpoints in the defensive line.

Soon Turian boots could be heard in the distance forcing the defenders to stop strengthening the line and man it instead. The moment the first Turian troops climbed over the slope in the distance all weapons were aimed at them, though said targets didn't know it as they started their advance seemingly unopposed. The colonel in command of the advance quickly got on the radio with his underofficers ''Advance as quickly as possible, before human re-enforcements arrive to actually man these defences!'' was the order repeated throughout the advancing Turian force, the officer hoping to finally have found a weak point in the human defences. Moments later he contacted the rear-guard ''Send over as many tanks as possible, we might have found our breakthrough!''

As his troops were now moving through the crater filled field, taking not a moment to take cover with he himself among them, the colonel would never get to realize just how costly of a mistake he had made as on the other side of the battle-field the master chief gave the order ''Open fire.'' With all defenders opening simultaneously the moment the order was given, the first ranks of Turian soldiers were completely decimated within seconds, their shields shredded through as if they weren't there in the first place, said colonel among them, with dozens more dying each second, with several precious seconds lost before it was realized just what was happening after the commanding officer was suddenly no longer alive.

Then the Turians started taking cover inside the artillery craters and firing back at the human soldiers, and while the return fire was far less effective than the human volley had been, it didn't need to be as unlike the Turians, the humans did not have the men to replace any losses taken, also forcing the humans to take cover far more in return. Visually it seemed as if streaks of blue fire met streaks of red, yellow and blue fire in addition to waves of lead, with the shell-craters starting to turn blue from their fallen inhabitants while the trenches became once more drenched in the red blood of its defenders.

As we zoom out from the battlefield, we can see similar battles happening all over the planet, hundreds of humans facing off against forces usually at least double their number in each collision, waves of lead and energy exchanging with torrential rains of Eezo powered metal grains, while far above a battle rages in space between thousands of ships from both sides, all fighting for the fate of what was once called the red planet, but is now known by another name: The Floating Fortress of Mankind. Victory or loss, for better or worse, the battle for it is that which will determine the war. Hundreds of millions on both sides had already died for it, with billions more being wounded, with those soldiers oft still fighting on in spite of said wounds.

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Dimension: Mass Effect, Solar system: SOL, Planet: near Mars, Location: Bridge of the frigate SSV Seawolf, Date: ?, POV: 1st person, Donnel Udina.

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I feel a wave of force pick me up and slam me against the wall, most likely an explosion. With artificial gravity temporarily disabled by the impact before it starts up again, throwing me to the ground and making me see black. As I start coming to moments later, I shake my head trying to stand up ''Aaarggghhh!'' I fall back down, enhancing the pain even more. Looking down I see that my left foot is completely mangled with the armoured boot around it all but disintegrated, I am losing far too much blood, I need to cauterize the wound or I'll die in minutes, no other choice. I pull my plasma dagger out of its sheath, take hold of my leg at the joint connecting it to my foot and slash down, screaming out in pain once more while the stump is cauterized, before looking around in a haze of pain.

''Commander-'' I start but then I see Natalie's corpse pinned to the wall by a large piece of hull armour. Damnit not another one! I've lost far too many already this damn week! Looking around the bridge in desperation for any sign of life among my other comrades I see not a single one… only heaps of blood and body parts. I'm the only one left… ''Engineering to bridge, engineering to bridge!''

I hear a voice coming from the commanders station, which is somehow still partially intact. Gathering my strength I push myself off the wall, flying forward a bit as my leg once more acts up badly upon hitting the ground while my back feels as if it is broken before I start crawling towards it, the few meter journey taking an agonizingly long before I reach the station and with my remaining strength pull myself up on it to answer ''Second Lieutenant Udina reporting from Bridge, I am the only survivor among bridge crew, repeat all other bridge personnel are dead.''

''Ensign Vettel here at engineering, myself and ensign Molotov are the only remaining crew members alive as well, damnit.'' The raw hurt can be felt coming from the voice even through the indirect connection. ''You are the only officer left on the ship lieutenant, though we can hardly call it that anymore. The only things still working are a third of the engines, the Slipspace drive, emergency power generator and backup artificial gravity generators plus emergency life support.'' Looking over the commanders viewscreen I notice even more bad news.

''And on top of that all our damn weapons cannot be fired anymore from the bridge, are secondary controls there working for them?'' The silence I get in reply interrupted only by silent cursing for the next half a minute is more than enough of an answer. ''Then we have only one option left. We arm the Slipspace drive while I set the ship on a ramming course to the dreadnought that's getting closer. It seems to not have noticed we're not dead yet, let us notify them of it.'' I get grim but determined affirmatives, all three of us know we will die soon but we will make them pay dearly for it.

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Dimension: Mass Effect, Solar system: SOL, Planet: near Mars, Location: bridge of the dreadnought THSF Palaven's Fury, Date: ?, POV: 3rd person

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Despite the battle going on around them, the turian bridge crew was working with near robotic efficiency, no emotion shown nor any physical indications that any except the admiral themselves were even feeling it. ''The SNV Surkesh's Viper was just destroyed, no survivors. That leaves us and the Destiny Ascension as the only remaining dreadnoughts left admiral.'' Is noted by the ships comms officer.

''Damnit, I'll have to reroute two of our cruisers to that flank, the Salarians won't be able to hold for long without more support.'' The comms officer turns back to his screen once the admiral finishes talking, while the admiral types in the commands on her pad to shift the remaining two cruiser reserves over to the right flank of the line, instead of their current position defending the dreadnought against fighter and small vessel assaults.

Before the admiral is a large battlefield map, with thousands of dots, all representing ships, a very large wave of mostly small blue dots slowly forcing away a far smaller fleet of on average a lot larger red dots. The officer can be heard muttering to himself ''As long as we keep up this momentum we should be victorious, we are pushing them. However our exchange rate of casualties is not a good thing, especially not in the heavier ship department.'' As always, the bridge crew does not react to the admirals mutterings.

''Admiral, there is movement in sector three, last enemy vessel was taken out ten minutes ago by a shot punching through their bridge. How do we proceed?'' The admiral takes a look before replying ''It's probably some fighters or shuttles from one of the ships that they managed to get to work, use the GARDIAN and broadside weapons to fight them, keep the main gun firing on the enemy heavy cruiser trying to perform a counter-attack.''

Moments later the admiral is proven wrong ''Admiral enemy is frigate and closing in. No weapons fire detected.'' The admiral looks confused for a moment before realization dawns and he stands up and shouts ''Turn the ship, aim the main gun! They're'' he never gets to finish the sentence as the ship is engulfed in a nuclear explosion, forever silencing the Palaven's Fury. As both of the remains of both of the now dead ships drift away from the leftover power of the explosion, we can see the giant fleet-battle still raging on behind them, with thousands of ships still fighting, but far more dead hulks and scattered chunks of debris floating around, now little more than a silent reminder of the will to fight till the bitter end of both sides of the conflict.

Going towards the battle we can now see a number Slipspace portals opening on the right flank of the battle, with a giant ship storming out of one of them supported by a dozen far smaller, but still cruiser sized, ships as the main gun of the leading ship opens fire, blasting through a number of small ships before destroying a cruiser, with the previously advancing council ships now being the ones on the defensive and forced back while losing more and more ships to the surprise attack, with the dreadnought that lead most of these ships also being gone throwing away almost all chances of an organized counter to this new attack force.

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Dimension: Mass Effect, Solar system: SOL, Planet: Mars, Location: 2nd battalion of the 1st ODST Division's defensive position, Date: ?, POV: 3rd person

We can see lieutenant Anderson firing a pistol at the enemy with his left hand while yelling into his comms. ''We need fire support on grid 17-10, 500 meters from our position as quickly as possible, enemy seems to be, no correction: enemy is bringing in armoured support! Our only still surviving drone has managed to slip behind the enemy lines and is showing their entire remaining tank company approaching for another attack, if we wish to survive for long I will need some form of artillery or anti-tank support pront-!'' Just as he finished saying this a burst of projectiles burst through the sandbags in front of him before they breakhis shields with a shot going it through his already badly wounded right shoulder, while another cut open the lower end of his ear, also breaking the jury-rigged com device that could potentially work around hostile jamming.

The damage forced him to drop his gun and let out a heavily pained grunt, causing a nearby soldier to look over before yelling ''Medic! The lieutenant is down!'' Before continuing putting fire downrange from his machine gun, while a medic comes crawling up before he closes the wound on the arm with some medi-gel before slightly smearing a bit more of it over his earlobe. Moments later he is back up again cursing at the misfortune before picking up his pistol, standing up and once more aiming it at the enemy lines, firing it all the while

Opposing the left flank of the defensive line, two tanks charged over the slope and entered the battlefield only for one of them to almost instantaneously be blown to dozens of pieces with a laser destroying the containment of its mass effect core, the explosion itself and the shrapnel injuring numerous nearby Turians. The second tank turns towards the point the laser came from and fires back with its main gun letting loose a stream of Talon sized Eezo powered chunks of metal, destroying one of the few pieces of hard cover left on the battlefield, only for a dozen different blasts of plasma and energy to slam into it within seconds, tearing off large portions of the hull while also killing the driver, sending it crashing down into the ground on top of its former comrade in arms, forcing the remaining crew and surviving nearby troops to get away quickly making easy targets for the defenders.

This caused a temporary boost to human morale until the what remains of the entire tank company charges up over the hill towards the human troops over a field filled with the husks of half of their comrades, creating the reverse effect. Down to only overclocked energy rifles of fallen soldiers and what few of the battalion's machine guns and light mortars remained to fight them, all hope seems lost and the men prepare for death in a stand of defiance against a superior enemy, giant bolts of plasma, metal and energy begin raining down upon the enemy, followed by large cannisters falling in the Turian lines behind the hill, erupting into a yellow fog.

Human fire and morale both pick up again, while SPAT guns race around the corner and start firing upon the surviving hostile tanks while into positions of cover behind what few remaining strongpoints there are in the defensive lines, with the shapes of SA aircraft, frigates and cruisers appearing on the far horizon.

The Master Chief's comm crackles to life ''Finally we were able to break through interference. The battle in orbit has been won, re-enforcements are heading ground-side in shuttles with air support on its way, while the advanced units of the fiftieth Chinese infantry division have already arrived at your position, the remainder is just around the corner. They need the enemies attention to be fully away from them to ensure they can get through the open area behind your lines.''

Cheers went up through the human lines at the sights in front of and behind them before the order ''Prepare to charge!'' was given and repeated by what few officers remained down the lines, with troops quickly attaching bayonets to their rifles or grabbing swords and combat knives while checking if their armours were sealed and if not, don their gas masks, while those too wounded too charge take over those positions at mortar and machine guns not already taken by walking wounded, the lieutenant dropping his nearly empty pistol in exchange for his service sword.

Moments later the order came ''In name of mankind, charge!'' as they climbed out of the trenched and roaring the battlecries ''For Mars!'' and ''Victory to the alliance!'' all charged towards the enemy, at motley mix of power armour and regular orbital drop infantry, less than a hundred in total, towards an enemy that was still reeling from losing most of their tanks and officers from the sudden bombardment, chemical attacks and hostile AT units, but still had numerous times more soldiers in the field with the Chinese forces appearing from behind them also charging forward to join the fray.

While some of the remaining Turians opened fire upon the humans, it was sporadic, uncoordinated and inaccurate due near all being affected by the gas, causing only a handful of casualties while letting the humans keep their momentum, which cost them badly only short moments after.

As the first of the men, an energy sword wielding green giant, crashed into the disorganized Turian lines while slicing their way forward nearly as a scythe through a wheat-field, several times more Turians die in the first moments than that there are troops of the second battalion left alive on the field, shattering what little coordination there was left amongst the Turians, causing it to turn into from small groups to single soldiers fighting back individually which then got swept away in less than a few minutes as the human re-enforcements reached them turning the once proud Turian fighting regiment into a routing mob with what few were left trying to fight back getting oft literally trampled by either human troops or their own allies.

This continues into and through the fallback line where the worst of the gas and bombardments hit in addition to continued follow up bombardments by newly available air support turning it into a completely chaotic nearly unmanned defensive line, with only a handful of troops still able to resist at all. Similar scenes are occurring all over the planet, with total victory being announced as what high ranking officers that remain amongst the council forces start announcing surrender on open radio communications. Moments later though, the troops are extremely confused for a moment as green ''Mission accomplished'' signs appear in front of them, before they start realizing what just happened, cursing all the while.

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Dimension: Mass Effect, Solar system: SOL, Planet: Titan, Location: Office of the commander of VR training facility Alpha, Date: , POV: 3rd person

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The master chief stands in front of general Sigmund von Neumann, the overall commanding officer of the new training program, and the one that ended up having to take overall command midway through the battle in the simulated campaign for Mars that they had just fought. With them was the commanding officer of china's second army, general Xi Yat-Sen, who had commanded the 'Turian' portion of the council ground forces on top of being their overall commander, plus admirals Cortana and Dresher, who had commanded the Council and Alliance fleets respectively.

''So'' Sigmund began. ''While this simulation has shown us much good about our armies and navies, especially due to the fact that most of our troops didn't know it was a simulation until they were either taken down or the campaign itself ended, thank you for the suggestion by the way colonel that made this all possible, especially the addition of civilians testing out the same new simulation technology on Mars and making it feel far more realistic.'' The master chief gave an almost imperceptible nod at this, though it was far easier to notice than usual due to him wearing his dress uniform instead of his armour.

''However'' the general continued ''it also showed three major issues: A. large numbers of our troops are in dire need of more close quarters combat training, as we saw in the battles that due to shielding and Citadel numerical superiority, our troops where often forced into either initiating such fighting or sometimes in the case of when against Elcor breakthrough units, Turian regulars or Asari commando's defend against it. It has shown that while in 1 on 1 fights our troops will almost never lose to any enemy the council can field due to both being equipped far more effectively for such fighting and also being trained more in it, units usually meant to be heavy weapons crews or tank crewmen oft only even got close to those results due to the better close quarters gear, where especially they but also large numbers of other units, especially those belonging to the Systems Alliance directly, started suffering direly when faced in such scenario's outnumbered by the enemy, which is a large problem when the entire point of such fighting from us is oft to overcome opposing numerical superiority. Any suggestions?''

''Sir, the ODST and power armour divisions, as well as those troops from the French, German and Russian militaries in general performed extremely well in those situations. I suggest doing more shared training exercises between them and the other armies to teach our and their soldiers in this field, with regular full on battles in simulations to test at least to an extent the average capabilities of the common soldier on how to use it in life or death combat against actual opponents.''

The general could be seen thinking this over for a moment, before nodding his consent. ''I'll draw up a more detailed proposal and send it to high command before seeing if any of those governments might be interested in it. We need the ODST and power armour units too much to train the extreme influx of recent additional divisions in those sectors to actually send much if any of them over to train entire armies of hundreds of millions in close quarters combat. Thank you again colonel. Now'' his tone turned more towards the two A.I. in the room specifically. ''this brings us to number two, which I only saw from the other side of the battlefield and only from the groundside of that but even I could see there was something utterly horribly wrong with your V.I. troops and, if to a lesser extent, their A.I. leadership, especially among the field officers. Just what was going on with that?''

Cortana and Yat-Sen looked at each-other before they shared a nod and Sen began ''The main problem for the A.I themselves on the ground were to be honest at least partially reliant on the fact that we might not have fully thought through just what would happen in the field. For example, usually when going into a strategic or tactical match, it's a single Human or A.I. officer leading a number of V.I. troops against another human or A.I. officer, or a few against a few, with all knowing it was just a simulation, no matter what the number of V.I. troops used was. Here an army of billions of V.I. lead by less than a hundred million A.I. was fighting an army of close to a billion human soldiers. Meaning that with our own troops, the moment an officer died and they were the only ones in the area, their platoon would be unable to actually think and would either stay in place and defend themselves or literally keep on following their last order without any chance of changing the plan the moment something went wrong.

On top of this is the fact that unlike their human enemies, our A.I. soldiers saw this is as a training exercise instead of an actual war, meaning that they were completely and utterly unprepared for the ferocity and tenacity of human troops.'' She shakes her head at the thought just thinking of how harshly the humans had fought. ''Single squads holding last stands against entire divisions of hostiles, soldiers fighting on despite losing limbs, heavily damaged ships suicide bombing while ramming by overcharging their FTL drives, single soldiers playing dead after their ammunition was spent only to ambush entire platoons while only have a bayonetted rifle, knife or sword on them left, or even civilians that had been gotten into the program for the realism actually taking up arms alongside the soldiers and fighting desperately to try to take us out, no matter the cost. Because as far as they knew, the moment Mars was lost, a large number of our civilians, including their friends and families in numerous occasions, would be killed by the council troops just for existing as something they did not appreciate being alive.''

Cortana picked up there ''Another problem which turned up in the first one already is a pretty simple thing: our combat V.I's are horrible. They are good, even nearly perfect at controlling any kind of bodies they could possibly need to use themselves, however their mental and tactical capabilities are so bad they are almost non-existent. A temporary stopgap would be to have our V.I's start recognising nearby organic officers as their superior officers the moment their own officers are unable to keep on fighting for one reason or another, however even with that it won't be a full solution.''

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**Okay by the time I write this on 16****th**** of March 2020 after having it lying around completely finished for months, however I had gotten myself a beta-reader, but for some reason he hasn't reacted since februari 2020. Because of this I've just decided to turn what was originally meant to be a single 15k words chapter into two chapters, one 6500 words of actual content, the other roughly 8500 words. One of the reasons why I am so uncertain about these chapters to wait with them so long is relatively simple, a lot of the 'words' I have written down about my stories is literally written down in paper note-books. This means that portions of them are potentially not very compatible with other portions of the story, as can probably be seen in this chapter where most time that I even spent writing on it was gluing a dozen different small stories together. I hope it is a somewhat interesting story, as always please do review on what you find less good or better about it, I try to apply advice wherever possible.**


	7. New Author's note

New review replies

While I have previously said that I would keep the review replies to a single authors note/chapter, only after reading through the previous one I'm realizing how much of a hassle it is to actually find the reply to your own review in that document. As such here is a new chapter for all reviews posted after the last authors note went up. Also as a side-note, can people please fill in a fake name, it doesn't matter to me if you log in to review or not, but I would like to be able to use a name other than guest to answer a review as after a while it becomes hard to see if I've replied to somebody already or not with 3 or 4 guest reviews after eachother.

Axccel: we get it, you dislike Trump for not taking shit and being against giving you free money. So, like anyone against truth, you make stuff up and believe it's true "because it is". Funnily enough, reality doesn't care. People can say all the crap they want but reality won't change for them. Like Trump silencing the press...the media is so loud and in-your-face no one can honestly claim that. Or that racism is big in the US when practically no one here has ever seen or experienced racism and they just claim its racist that the free stuff they're given is not on par with the things everyone else earns (it is, though, but they imagine white people have better everything).

And countries who only have social healthcare and more because another country gives them money can't contribute to anything in a meaningful way as they lack the economic strength to do so. Buying power would shrink drastically if that money was withheld. Which is why the EU is basically just handshaking and rules without substance.

Reply: Okay I think I've already replied to this one in a personal message but here is a relatively simple answer: I have expressly written into the story why I had America been the one to fall somewhat originally in the first version of the time-line and also the fairly simple fact that I needed at least some of the major powers to have economic issues simply to ensure neither another arms race is started in the 2020's nor another world war, as if somehow humanity survived both of them they would before discovering Mass Effect already have become not just equal but superior to the council quality wise outside of infantry shielding (as the problems of fully relying on Eezo tech force you to pretty much adopt a quantity has a quality of its own approach rather than actually being high quality in anything besides infantry gear) though their equipment would by that point be far less cost effective than the council's own.

I have never said anything about racist policies as that is mostly just people trying to get money through appealing to public sympathies as far as I know, but I neither referred to that in this story nor even insinuated it. I do dislike Trump personally a bit yes but that is mostly from recent times and just how damn little he explains why he thinks/does things rather than anything from the time where I actually wrote the time-line chapter.

Additionally the only way countries that have a social healthcare system pay for them depends in any way on international cash is trading, as most of those countries are in the top 20 of world economies and have a decently high GDP per capita. On top of that if you think the EU is just handshaking, then you haven't seen the actual consequences of crossing the line enough to get the Euro parliament angry. After actually answering your review it should be noted that you are doing exactly what you are accusing me of, making up stuff and believing its true ''Because it is.''.

Gruntsbreeder: Good chapter.

Reply: Thank you for the compliment.

Guest: Can't wait for more, keep up the good work

Reply: Thank you for the compliment.

Brother Bov: Nah man, you managed it well

Reply: Thank you for the compliment.

Guest: Just an fyi both America and Russia have had lasers capable of shooting down ICBM since the early to mid 70's though ridiculously expensive to build the maintenance cost is practically non-existent basically run off a supercomputer 7 lasers hit a mirror at an exact spot bouncing it up onto a mirror in upper atmosphere then bouncing off other mirrors until it is aimed down at the final target. The lasers aren't capable of destroying a tank as it is grounded and some of the energy is lost but of ruining the electronics needed to make the missile work or making liquid fuel explode.

Reply: Thank you for actually bringing that up, I was a bit surprised nobody that wanted to debunk the time-line as bad previously had brought it up because it is one of the few actually good arguments against it. I know those lasers exist however here is the thing, I said practical laser weaponry. As in laser weaponry you can put on tanks and send them into battle, or put half a dozen in an AA-battery and move it into position to shoot down hostile missiles. I've read results from the simulated tests of using those things, neither side has enough of them to wipe out more than 15% of all WMD weaponry that would hit them, nor are they intending to build a large number more as of this time. The laser tech the USA developed in this story is essentially a far more powerful, somewhat cheaper and more movable version of those things but with the problem of now having more maintenance costs. Meanwhile the laser tech of the EU is more on a different route and both cheaper, sturdier and far more mobile, but less powerful on an individual level.

Guest: The chapter seems to have jumped past several important pieces of information. For example who is the admiral teaching and how did he get the information. How come the Turians are inside the SOL system fighting on one of the planets? This makes the story clunky and confusing if you could clear this up in the next chapter that would be greatly appreciated.

Reply: in order. 1. The Admiral teaching is Cortana, or in other words, the UNSC AI that knows almost everything there is to know about ships in the HALO universe, if you have read the chapter you should also have read that she was the one literally teaching the class. The reason why they know about a lot of things of the council if you're asking about that on the other hand is relatively simple and was hinted at heavily in a previous chapter, which I didn't expand on here because people have been telling me in other stories that I explain far too much and need to leave things for people to figure out. But its fairly simple, in the sense that the forerunner AI, adventurous explorer, had placed hidden observational equipment 'near' all developing species home world's to monitor their growth and how they would turn out, meaning that with their superior computing capabilities and well, A.I., they can now easily infiltrate even the most protected portions of the extranet and just look everything up on the council side of things.

2\. The Turian one is explained if you read the remainder of the chapter, there are no real Turians in the SOL system. It's a simulation, which a large portion of the troops participating didn't know of it was a simulation and with it being so realistic that even most of the non-AI personnel that knew it was a simulation started doubting themselves a part of the way through and instead started believing themselves it was real. Here I kept it a bit short partly because I wanted to keep some of the SA's capabilities a bit of a secret before the actual war against the council starts to get some hopefully interesting surprises in battles there and also because these things are mainly to show just what the SA is up to in the time between them meeting the UNSC personnel and their meetings with the Mass Effect non-human races. If you still want to read the starting portion of the simulation though I can give you a few pages full of it, as I had some things written down previous for it but decided on not doing them just to ensure people didn't guess that the whole thing was just a simulation from the start.

Guest: I get why you had trump be the "bad guy" but there are three things you may not have considered: 1 that you could have easily made it as if some unknown president won the 2016 or 2020 election as this is an au so some unknown/differnet president would work. 2. That laser weaponry isn't something we can use outside of incredibly massive power sources as you almost get a 3 watts in to 1 watt out at target granted that varies depending on range and laser type so from a military standpoint rail guns are far more versatile and powerful for what you put in. As in order for a laser to be effective you need to be in the megawatts range while for the same megawatts put in to a rail gun you get similar in and at target power. 3 coal power in the United states is actually cleaner for the environment than nuclear or wind power. This is done through air scrubbers and filters on the outflow as well as burning extremely hot to reduce ash where as nuclear power always has the risk of some natural disaster ruining the surrounding landscape for years like in Chernobyl or in the more recent earthquakes in Japan. While wind is actually quite deadly to flying creatures. Coal powers carbon footprint is similar to that of an electron solar panel but greater than that of a steam solar plant. It is also comparable to that of a wind turbine.

While everyone on the news will tell you that fossil fuels are ruining the planet and we are all going to die if we don't get carbon neutral within the next what ten years now. In America the emissions test for using fossil fuels of any variety puts out a smaller carbon footprint than many of the new carbon/environmentally friendly green new car power whatever you choose. A Prius has a 3 times larger carbon footprint than a hummer over the course of 10 years or 200 thousand miles whichever comes first. Over 90 percent of the carbon emissions worldwide are not man made well 78 percent if you take out forest fires which may or may not be man-made. What I'm saying is that to much panic is being placed on carbon emmisions where we should focus is not on catbon emissions but on oxygen emissions. If we can get those to match then we dont have anything to worry about. It's not that suddenly we shot up in how much carbon we produce if anything we leveled off what changed was the amount of trees to absorb and eat the carbon and let out oxygen and damage to oceanic bacteria that has slowed down and made the problem look much worse than it is.

Reply: Thank you for the well argued points, I will answer all of them to the best of my capabilities. 1. If I made an unknown president the leader of the USA everyone would have guessed Trump instantaneously. Also I had most of the pre- 2040 time-line written for another story where the world essentially descended into a somewhat more heated version of the cold war by the 2040's with the USA, China and China's communist/socialist allies including roughly half of India vs the EU, the other half of India and the EU's allies in Africa and the America's. Now its simply that so many people have already read it that I'll get complaints no matter what I change about that portion.

2\. I would like to point out that in 2016 when I came up with the idea in general, there was an ongoing project to make laser weaponry that could be used on tanks and small ships not only as an anti-missile defence but also as an actual offensive weapon against IFV's, tanks and lightly armoured ships shared between the UK and the Netherlands which had shown a decent amount of promise, but that one was cancelled sometime early during the Brexit as far as I know. I just had both the USA and them continue development for that by starting it a year or so earlier. Also all prototypes and early versions of things need far more power than later versions in comparison so the thought of somebody making a breakthrough in development of turning it into a more useful ratio isn't too strange. Meanwhile Rail guns have their own fair share of issues, including that they actually need ammunition and that as far as I know the current versions have horrible recoil that makes it nearly useless from a practical standpoint on anything other than large naval vessels, meaning that far more research is needed into that (Keep in mind that almost every time I put something as a discovery there now is a practical version of it that can actually efficiently be used in combat as more than a gimmick, such as the USA having railguns that can be used as the turrets on tanks by the 2040's.)

3\. I would like to point out that while Chernobyl was horrible, the problems at the nuclear plant in Japan killed literally one person, even though the reactor was an aging one and its effect on the surrounding environment was relatively minimal. The problem of coal and other fossil fuels, just as much as the fact that they would be a problem because of carbon emissions, is the fact that if we were to continue using them as we are now especially with the USA's increase in using them, we will run out of their reserves within the coming fifty or so years. If beforehand we have not mostly switched to something else we might very well get a fallout games style scenario, only with less Vaults and far less government testing on if you can turn humans into what are essentially zombies capable of thinking for themselves and caring for others and far more countries with decent anti-WMD defences still fighting on somewhat whole while half the world is a nuclear wasteland with billions of deaths before it ends with nothing truly being achieved besides our technological capabilities to kill eachtoher and power devices that kill eachother being strengthened. Also a large portion of carbon emissions are not manmade, yes, however we are the ones tipping it over the edge of if it is safe or not for organic life on the planet to continue existing for long periods of time in the future.

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Okay that was all the answering of reviews done, if anyone has more questions, please ask them.


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